So things are CRAZILY busy right now! I knew things would be intense but I didn't think it would pick up so quickly!
I'm going to give you an idea of what my schedule is like, which revolves around three major things: classes, seminars, and the lab.
Classes
This semester I only have two classes - Cell Biology and Physiology, and Topics in Molecular Medicine. Cell Bio meets MWF for an hour and a half, and Topics is a seminar/journal club class that meets every Wednesday for two hours.
Cell Bio uses the same text I used when I took Cell as an undergrad at Ithaca, and since it was the newest edition at the time, I didn't have to buy a new one (woot!). So far, I am pleased to say that my undergrad cell bio class has prepared me pretty well for the grad level...while we are definitely going into more detail on all the topics, I have enough background knowledge to follow everything pretty easily (thanks Professor Cluett). The readings in the text are review since I've already done them before last year. All in all I am pretty confident I am going to do well in the course, although we are definitely going at a somewhat accelerated pace.
The course is taught by a variety of professors, with one of them acting as class coordinator. Basically they bring in the resident expert on the topic and have them give a lecture about it. This is both a blessing and a curse; on the one hand, you are getting very expert explanations of the material, but on the other hand you sometimes run the risk of dissecting the topic to a level of detail that is not really useful for our purposes. Since there are so many professors giving lectures, you also see a the gamut of presentation/teaching skills; some professors are definitely better than others when it comes to giving presentations. Again, the advantage here is that we aren't stuck with one particular teaching style but that also means we are constantly adapting to new presentation patterns. So far it hasn't been terribly difficult but it can sometimes be a challenge (or just annoying). Another drawback is that professors often don't know what has already been taught in the course, and may explain a process that we've already gone over in a lot of detail, or breeze over something we haven't seen yet. This was highlighted in the lecture on the nucleus where, to my surprise, the lecturer spent about five minutes at the end of the lecture talking very rapidly about the RanGTP cycle and its contribution to nuclear import/export; up to this point, no one had gone over the Ras-like GTPases and their regulators like GEF's, GAP's and GPI's, so while I understood what he was saying, I know many of my peers had a hard time following him. Fortunately, this was covered in more detail in a later lecture but it was still pretty disconected.
The professors also often give us "assigned reading" from primary sources. Initially I would try do all of these readings, but it very quickly became way too much (especially when the mitochondria lecturer posted five articles, two of which were twenty page reviews). I decided that, while some of the primary articles were interesting, they were really only useful as references for a more detailed look at the system or as a review to complement the textbook. I decided I would look at them only if I found a topic to be interesting or confusing, and I wanted some more reading about it.
Since I've already taken a Cell bio class, I have an idea of what works for me in learning the material, so I feel like I'm good to go.
My other class is a journal club type class which looks at the molecular basis of certian diseases and their treatments. We read two papers a week, a "clinical" and "basic science" article relating to a specific disease or condition - say, Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma. Two students present the papers and we have discussions. It's in pretty much the same style as my capstone Biochem course. This class isn't so bad, it's just a lot of reading. One plus side is that, after my senior year and into this year, I am finding that my proficiency at reading and interpreting scientific papers has really improved, and I can spend more time thinking about the experiments and interpretations rather than figuring out what the nomenclature means.
Seminars
So, in addition to classes, there are various seminars hosted by different departments on campus. They are usually once a week and for the most part invite faculty outside of Penn to come and give a one hour talk, though sometimes in-house faculty or even upper classmen grad students give talks...and sometimes its an actual thesis presentation.
Just within my concentration, there are four seminars that are directly applicable: Virology, Prokaryotes, Parasitology, and Microbiology (ostensibly a mix of the three, though it usually is light on parasites). In addition, there is the occasional immunology seminar that might be applicable/interesting. And since Penn is a Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), there is also a seminar series hosted by them. Put them all together, and that's a lot of seminars. In practice, I go to Virology and Microbiology seminars regularly, the former because it is directly related to my interests, and the latter because, even when it's not a virology talk, the speakers are excellent. Every now and then I'll pop into an Immnunology or CFAR talk, but it's hard to go to all of them. While this doesn't seem like a whole lot, if you add these seminars to the time I spend in class, you will find they very quickly eat up your day. And these are just the seminars that are directly related to my major.
I find that the seminars are very useful because you will always learn something new. They can be good sources of new ideas, techniques or approaches. The departments also host lunches with the speakers and invite grad students to join, so they can be excellent networking opportunities, especially for grad students starting to look at life after graduation. And if nothing else, they can often be a very cool story about an organism or system you didn't know about.
Lab
Basically any time not spent in class and seminar should be spent in lab. The specific schedule you develop in the lab really depends on your commitments and the inclinations of the PI and your lab mates. I generally work till sometime between 5pm and 6pm, and on the days I don't have a morning class I try to get in around 9:30. It has been somewhat of an adjustment for me because I am coming out of a summer rotation where the entire day was devoted to lab; now some days have more lab time than others, and I have to make sure to budget enough time to do my readings and study.
In addition, most labs have a weekly lab meeting, and ours is no exception. In addition, our lab does a somewhat informal journal club where once a week (usually Friday over lunch) we read and discuss an article that is related to someone's project or that is a hot new finding in the HIV field.
Fortunately, most labs are pretty flexible about when you do your work; people are more concerned that you are making progress than when you are doing it. Because I live relatively close, I could do lab work in the evenings or come in on the weekends to do an experiment or two; this flexibility makes trying to get everything done much easier, but it has so far still been rather challenging. Now that I'm a few weeks into things I am starting to develop a rhythm; my online calendar has been invaluable in keeping my commitments straight.
The take-home message is that time-management skills are a must!
Monday, September 21, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Grad Diary 9/12/09
This past week was orientation, which was both exciting and really, really boring.
Some of the sessions were kind of useless, especially because a lot of the initial advice was about how to select your rotation labs and make the most of them, or basic safety guidelines, all of which I already have plenty of experience with after my time in the summer. Some were more useful, like the various panels of different resources there are on campus, which as and undergrad didn't seem as pertinent (I always had someone to point me in the right direction), but as a more independent grad student felt more useful. We also had various speakers from faculty at the university, which were on the whole not so bad.
On the plus side, there were plenty of receptions and lunches to keep us well fed for this first week, which was pretty sweet. Not to mention that because most grad students are of age, all of these events included free booze. I'm not a drinker myself, but I could appreciate the novelty.
The receptions were also great opportunities to meet people within and outside your programs. Some of them also included upper classmen, so these were great networking/socializing events. It was really nice to have spent the summer early because I already knew a couple of students, which helped me navigate these sometimes awkward events. I will admit that often people would clump with their program, especially by the fourth and fifth day, but on the whole it was a nice opportunity to see who was out there.
I'm glad that orientation is over...on the whole it was a little boring but there were some good parts as well. I'm excited for classes to begin on Monday. I'll also be starting my next rotation with Una O'Doherty on Tuesday, so I'm pretty excited.
Some of the sessions were kind of useless, especially because a lot of the initial advice was about how to select your rotation labs and make the most of them, or basic safety guidelines, all of which I already have plenty of experience with after my time in the summer. Some were more useful, like the various panels of different resources there are on campus, which as and undergrad didn't seem as pertinent (I always had someone to point me in the right direction), but as a more independent grad student felt more useful. We also had various speakers from faculty at the university, which were on the whole not so bad.
On the plus side, there were plenty of receptions and lunches to keep us well fed for this first week, which was pretty sweet. Not to mention that because most grad students are of age, all of these events included free booze. I'm not a drinker myself, but I could appreciate the novelty.
The receptions were also great opportunities to meet people within and outside your programs. Some of them also included upper classmen, so these were great networking/socializing events. It was really nice to have spent the summer early because I already knew a couple of students, which helped me navigate these sometimes awkward events. I will admit that often people would clump with their program, especially by the fourth and fifth day, but on the whole it was a nice opportunity to see who was out there.
I'm glad that orientation is over...on the whole it was a little boring but there were some good parts as well. I'm excited for classes to begin on Monday. I'll also be starting my next rotation with Una O'Doherty on Tuesday, so I'm pretty excited.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Grad Diary 9/7/09
It's Labor Day, and I was on my way up to campus from my apartment to run some errands. My apartment is in West Philadelphia, about 10 blocks west of the main campus. It's a nice area with lots of trees and Victorian style houses. On my way to campus I walk past two blocks or so of Penn fraternities and sororities before entering the campus proper. Up until now I hadn't really taken notice of them.
As I was walking to campus on this fine September morning, I started noticing the debris of what had to be quite the block party. As I walked closer and closer to campus, the volume of beer cans, red cups, glossy party announcement, and the pungent aroma of stale beer increased with every step. On one porch I could see a couch that was clearly no longer serviceable after the previous night's debauchery. In fact, you could use the cups and beer cans to track the very epicenter of this veritable explosion of undergrads celebrating their return to campus.
Ithaca doesn't have any fraternities on campus aside from a few music/honors frats. So most of this kind of action would have taken place on the Cornell campus. As I reached the opposite end of the two blocks of frats, a bemused expression on my face, I realized that I had fully entered the world of the grad student; the undergraduate population, which I had not too long ago been a part of, now felt so far removed from me that the site of such mayhem provoked a sense of detached hilarity.
The campus had been quite beautiful and relatively quiet all summer. It's going to be interesting to see how the return of the undergrads would change the dynamics.
As I was walking to campus on this fine September morning, I started noticing the debris of what had to be quite the block party. As I walked closer and closer to campus, the volume of beer cans, red cups, glossy party announcement, and the pungent aroma of stale beer increased with every step. On one porch I could see a couch that was clearly no longer serviceable after the previous night's debauchery. In fact, you could use the cups and beer cans to track the very epicenter of this veritable explosion of undergrads celebrating their return to campus.
Ithaca doesn't have any fraternities on campus aside from a few music/honors frats. So most of this kind of action would have taken place on the Cornell campus. As I reached the opposite end of the two blocks of frats, a bemused expression on my face, I realized that I had fully entered the world of the grad student; the undergraduate population, which I had not too long ago been a part of, now felt so far removed from me that the site of such mayhem provoked a sense of detached hilarity.
The campus had been quite beautiful and relatively quiet all summer. It's going to be interesting to see how the return of the undergrads would change the dynamics.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Grad Diary 9/3/09
Today was my last day in the Fraser lab. I gave a presentation summarizing my project and what I've learned during this past week's lab meeting. I'm also wrapping up a mini-paper to submit to Dr. Fraser by the end of the week.
The summer really flew by and I didn't fee like I got as much done as I would have liked, but that's what happens when you work in a lab for only 11 weeks or so. I learned a lot of things, and not just technique wise (though that was obviously a major component). I learned to navigate the lab and it's various personalities and how to begin working more independently on my projects and research questions.
I also learned that I really like writing papers and putting presentations together, which totally ups my nerd factor. And though I was still nervous at the beginning of my talk (which was totally silly) I felt pretty confident talking about my work, answering questions and being honest about what I didn't know or the weaknesses in certain experiments, etc. I have to give a lot of credit to the training I got at Ithaca, which gave me lots of practice putting together and giving presentations.
I am pretty sure I won't return to this lab for thesis work. I would want a lab with more interaction with the PI, and a lab environment where there is more interaction among the people in the lab. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy my time in the Fraser lab. My primary objective for this rotation was to learn a lot of basic techniques, get a feel for doing research at the next level, and begin acclimating myself to UPenn, and I feel I met all those goals very well.
I'll be looking forward to my next rotation with Una O'Doherty, but I will definitely be coming back to visit the Fraser lab to say hello. All in all, it was a successful summer; I'm really excited for classes to start!
The summer really flew by and I didn't fee like I got as much done as I would have liked, but that's what happens when you work in a lab for only 11 weeks or so. I learned a lot of things, and not just technique wise (though that was obviously a major component). I learned to navigate the lab and it's various personalities and how to begin working more independently on my projects and research questions.
I also learned that I really like writing papers and putting presentations together, which totally ups my nerd factor. And though I was still nervous at the beginning of my talk (which was totally silly) I felt pretty confident talking about my work, answering questions and being honest about what I didn't know or the weaknesses in certain experiments, etc. I have to give a lot of credit to the training I got at Ithaca, which gave me lots of practice putting together and giving presentations.
I am pretty sure I won't return to this lab for thesis work. I would want a lab with more interaction with the PI, and a lab environment where there is more interaction among the people in the lab. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy my time in the Fraser lab. My primary objective for this rotation was to learn a lot of basic techniques, get a feel for doing research at the next level, and begin acclimating myself to UPenn, and I feel I met all those goals very well.
I'll be looking forward to my next rotation with Una O'Doherty, but I will definitely be coming back to visit the Fraser lab to say hello. All in all, it was a successful summer; I'm really excited for classes to start!
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