zebrafish surgery

today was pretty amazing. i am so out of my comfort zone, but i'm just really excited about this research program. on tuesday i started and just basically sorted some zebrafish embryos, taking out any unfertilized eggs, and putting the rest in the incubator. then on friday, i came back and we took the embryos, which were now 3 day old larvae, and sedated and anesthetized them with triacaine. this made them stop moving. then we could separate them and put some in a drug solution and some in a control solution. then, using a microscope, we made small fin wounds on their tails. this was pretty hard since they are only about a millimeter or two long at this point, so when you're looking under a microscope any little twitch makes the blade go all over the place. the funny thing about that is i've been getting this little twitch in my finger for some reason, and when he asked to see my hands to make sure i'd be able to do the precision cutting, my finger was all twitching and he got a little concerned, but then it went away and i showed him that i could do it. but it was really interesting getting to do this little microsurgery. the basic idea behind it is to make a wound and then track the migration of lymphocytes and leukocytes to the wound. you can figure out the effects of drugs on the healing process, and all of it is comparable to what goes on in the human body. i should have a better idea of everything in the next couple of weeks, but hopefully soon i can go on my own and start doing my own experiments. i might even get some money out of it, if i get research funding. if not, i'll just get a paper route.

and...i'm back in school again

wow that was short. so i'm back in school, studying physiology and organic chemistry. i decided to skip gen chem 2 so i could take o chem from the same instructor that i had for gen chem 1. i figure it will help me to get a better letter of recommendation. it has created a few issues though. my professor says i should follow it up with o chem 2 in the fall, but the lab lecture conflicts with my cell bio class. also, a guy who does mcat testing says it would be better for me to finish gen chem 2 as it will better prepare me for the mcat over o chem 2. so i think i'm just going to take gen chem 2 in the fall, and hope i don't forget o chem over the semester. so anyway, back to this semester. physiology is on monday and wednesdays from 6-8:30 at night. so a night class for two and a half hours. pretty brutal, plus it's at the sandy annex, so i have to commute there from the campus in salt lake. both physiology and chemistry have discussions with them, plus i have a chem lab and lecture that goes with it. i also started my research on monday, so that should be pretty good, but will take a good chunk of my time. i'm just excited to expand my responsibilities past blanket distribution in the ER. AED will be meeting a few times during the summer as well to get things planned out for the coming fall semester. so it should be a busy summer, but also, i will hopefully be catching the early bus home every day and getting home at 6:30. hopefully i can catchup on time with my family before the year from hell starts in the fall.

summer break

hi, i'm summer vacation and i'm only a week long. lame. this was actually my favorite break in a long time. i had no cabinets to build, no websites to design, i just got to hang out the whole time. so fun. i still did my er shifts, and got my training done so i can get going on research when the summer semester starts. i'm a little stressed out just because every semester i am adding new stuff to my schedule, and i'm limited to 24 hours in a day. so now i have another 12-15 hours a week being added for research, and in the fall i'm going to be TAing, so that will add another 8 hours or so a week. plus AED will take a few hours a week, so extracurricular stuff is get up around 20-25 hours a week. kind of nuts. but if i can get through this next year, then i'll be applying and taking my MCAT and then i can just maintain for the next year and have things settle down a little bit, but it's just a lot of stress. so if i can survive straight weeks of getting home at 10:30 every night for a year, i should be okay. no problem right? hopefully i'll still have saturdays with my family, but i'm not holding my breath. i'm going to see if i can't get into the gym over the summer so i can work my gut down a little bit. i figure it would be sad to work for 12 years to be a doctor only to have a heart attack, so i might as well fit a little cardio in, maybe some toe touches, some jumping jacks, scissor kicks, lunges, jazzercise, pool aerobics...

finals week

spring semester is officially done. i am so glad. i needed some family time. things went really well. i got my fourth test back for chemistry (my last midterm test). i got a 99, which of course bugs me, because why did i miss that one. actually i'm pretty grateful because the section that i missed it on was one that i filled out the whole thing in the last one minute of test time. it was worth 18 points and was labeling an amino acid with molecular geometry, bond angle, and hybridization. so if i missed one out of 18 in a mad rush to get it filled out, i guess that's not too bad. the good news is that the lowest midterm is thrown out, so that sick 92 is gone, and i have 100, 100, and 99 for my exam scores. i'm pretty sure i aced the final, so i feel really good about chemistry. i'm taking the same teacher for ochem in a couple of weeks, so i'm excited to keep that relationship building. maybe we can go see a movie, or hold hands in the park or something. i got a 99 on my calc final, but he messed up on one problem which made the answer come out really messy, so he gave 5 extra credit points for whoever got it right. so i ended up with a 102 in that class for the semester. so i've got two letters of recommendation locked up pretty well. so excited about that. my bio final i didn't worry about so much. i would need to get a 60 on that final in order to get an A- in the class, and that's before the curve, so i didn't study as hard for that as i could have. i wanted to focus my attention on calc and chemistry. so i probably got a B on the test, which after the curve will probably be an A, but it doesn't matter. i got an A for the class and don't need a letter from him and i'm not going to try and TA for him, so i'm just glad its done. that class wore on me for some reason. i have my own views on evolution and sometimes they were in line with the class, but sometimes i just heard "this is all hypothesis" or "we have no way of knowing" one too many times. maybe if the biologists prayed for answers, they'd find them....hmmmm....dilemma. anyway, good semester, excited for a week and a half with my family, and then back to the books. PLUS RESEARCH!!! can't wait. fish lab, here i come.

part 2...

3 more classics.

tiny dancer

why would brooke reveal the existence of these pictures to me and then leave me alone with them. does she not know me at all? i guess when she was in wyoming, at my parents, over spring break, my brother dared her to get up onstage at some christian revival thing and start dancing (those who know brooke will not be surprised). i'm so happy to share these with the world.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

i got my first B this week. on a chemistry test. i was killing chemistry up to this point. i had two one hundreds. what the crap happened. sure the average was a 54 and i had an 85, but it might as well have been a 54. i knew that i hadn't had time to check my answers so i probably had a couple of dumb mistakes in there, and i did. but one of the things i got wrong really bugged me. it was on resonance structures, and i listed the two structures that were possible from the lecture and the book, but he said there was another one that was possible, even though it's not in the notes or in the book. i wish they would have said before the test that we'd have to do some mind reading, because i wasn't aware that that was allowed. anyway, they actually made a couple mistakes in grading and i ended up getting a 92. not great, but at least the A streak is still alive.

leaderSHAPE

already i'm bored just writing this. when you go to something called leaderSHAPE, you know you already have to expect cheesy get to know you exercises and pep talks, and super extra motivated 19 year olds who figure this is their first step on the road to student body presidency. i was so dreading this. for anyone who knows me, people are the last thing i want to be around on a saturday and i really hate wearing nametags. well, they gave me a nametag, and of course there ended up being people there, so it really started out disappointing. i did know a couple people there, so i wasn't completely awkward, but i would definitely say that i was almost completely awkward. i sat in the back row, and of course the first thing they talk about are the kind of people who sit in the back row, which made everyone get up after the break and move up a couple of rows, which was nice because it left the back row all to me. we had some pep talks and got to get up and practice being leaders and figured out what type of leaders we were and came to know how we could be better leaders, and leaders and leadership and leaderSHAPE, and before you know it 8 hours had flown by as if i was holding my breath for the whole time while someone was pushing thumb tacks into my scalp. the way i see it, if you're a leader, it comes naturally. people follow you because they trust you and you can fix things and make things work. leadership training is for macdonalds managers. i really don't mean to be cynical but cynicism sat with me for that entire 8 hours, and we got to be pretty close. plus i got to be psycho analyzed at lunch by a friend of mine from the 810 bus. so learned all kinds of things about myself. i don't look people in the eyes when i talk to them. i realize that about myself (see line 3 and 4 above). i do need to work on that. i also use my beard as a security blanket to keep people away. it is warm and fluffy, but i probably need to get over that too. i have made a few friends on campus, so i'm slowly getting better. i think lunch was the most informative part about today. the other thing was that while i was shaping my future of leadership, my wife was skiing with my kids, and rowan was hitting black diamonds and jonas skied for the first time at 2. i can't believe i missed it. so fun. i was so jealous. but then again, they didn't get to see who could make the tallest balloon structure by working as a team. their loss.

santa hits the ER

what's up with this guy? he sat outside the ER all grumpy and blew on a trumpet every once in a while. he about gave some lady a heart attack. but luckily a life flight helicopter was flying overhead and i was able to get this picture while he was distracted. santa, why you gots to be so bitter in the off-season?

p.s. actually now that i look at this photo full size, i guess he wasn't distracted. he was looking right at me. it's a little scary...those eyes...that beard...those little christmas ornaments...if santa tracks me down and kills me, someone give this picture to the police.

Calculicious

So i had a crazy idea. i was tutoring a few people in calculus and made an announcement in the weekly review, in class, before an exam, that we were going to be doing a review before the exam and that whoever wanted to join, could come. well i ended up getting like 20 people there and decided to talk to the teacher about doing these things for him on a permanent basis. i was thinking i could start up with him in the fall and tutor/TA for him, but he was like, "why don't you start now?" so he reserved me some classrooms and has been making announcements in class, and i've been getting like 40-50 people in my review sessions now. it's actually been really fun, and it's helped a lot of people. Peter, the calc professor, is like a math magician, and i don't think he understands how our little minds work sometimes. things are obvious to him that are incomprehensible to us. so i think it helps people to hear calculus be taught by someone who just learned it and doesn't see the world like in the matrix movies with everything made out of lines of numbers. but this is going to be another major leadership opportunity for my application, especially since only graduate students normally TA math, and i'm TAing while i'm actually taking the class. this has letter of recommendation written all over it. every time something like this happens, i'm just reminded that i'm doing what i'm supposed to be doing. it's just amazing how all these things just keep falling into place. i'm so freaking excited about it!! Also, i got a 100 on my calc exam this week.

Bio Exam

i was pretty nervous to get this bio exam back. bio evolution is split up into two sections, botany and animals. the two halves are taught by two separate teachers, the second being harder than the first. so this exam was the first one that i was taking from this teacher, who gives pretty hard tests. he said, in a review before the exam, that the scores will average lower on this one than on the first two, and this isn't going to be the type of exam where someone gets a 100 percent. so i was naturally pretty nervous when he announced that tests had been graded and were being handed back. he mentioned that the class average was 54 percent, but that there was one 100 percent out of about 250-300 tests...as a side note, my teacher has a handsome moustache and a perfectly round head of hair. magnificent.

Mr. Vice President

AED has a new vice president. his name is matt lamont and he and i are the same. i'm pretty excited about it. it's going to be a considerable time commitment, but will be a really good leadership experience to put on my med school app. in addition, the vice president becomes the president, and the last few presidents of AED all got accepted to the U med school, which is pretty competitive, so it's definitely good news. as i'm typing this, my oldest son (9) was reading over my shoulder and said, "Dad, congratulations, can you get me Barack Obama's autograph?". he's a special boy.