biochemistry – Imaginary Sunshine

Bleh…

Michelle — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:22:08 +0000

So I had my math final last night (starting at 7pm, bleh). I felt like it went fairly alright (then again, what do I know?). I had my biochemistry final today (yes, I know it’s a Sunday, someone should inform my university about that little tidbit too). And fudge it was difficult. =( On one hand, that class is not a prerequisite for any classes that I want to take in my 3rd and 4th year. On the other hand, it was freaking biochemistry and a difficult course and I spent a lot of money on the course, not to mention time. I’d finished nearly all of the problem sets (except for the second half of #8 – which was 30 pages long, by the way) and the practice final and all the tutorial problems and I feel as if all of those questions that they had made available to us did not fairly represent the difficulty of the problems that they were going to put onto the final. I left the room just before the professors told us that no one could leave as there was only 10 minutes left. There were people openly crying outside of the location of my biochem final. Openly crying. I saw one of my classmates on the bus after as I was leaving campus and she thought that was grossly unfair (in terms of difficulty when compared to the difficulty of the practice problems that we had). If they’re going to prepare us for the final, they should give us questions that reflect the level of difficulty or knowledge that we’re required to have for the final.

Just one more final before I’m done for the term… I won’t be getting my final grades until after the exam period is over (last day of April), but all of my professors have until mid-May to officially submit their marks (which is a lot better than when my psych professor took nearly a month after the final to input his grades). Whoot.

One more final, then I’m done for a couple months! I start work on May 3rd, pretty much looking forward to my almost week long break and to working again.

My sister was volunteering today at this convention and got a free ticket for my other sister to go and my sister (the one who wasn’t volunteering) met Mantracker! She got her photo taken with him and his autograph (one for her and one for me!). And I jokingly told her to ask him why he was so awesomely cool and then she did. His answer was “I’m not sure how to answer that without sounding vain”. Ahh, funny. I’ll take a photo of the photo card he autographed for me later!

Questions:

If you’re in school, what are you doing your summer term/break?
What is one thing that made your day today?

Last day of lectures!

Michelle — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:19:27 +0000

I had exactly one class today (biochemistry) and it was the most boring class of my life. Not because I was feeling restless because it was the last day of class, but because we were learning about enzymes regulating reactions… and she kept on saying the same thing over and over and over again because this student in my lecture (N), who asks stupid questions every single lecture, was going “I’m very confused, can you explain what an allosteric enzyme is to me again?” for more than one time.

Allosteric enzyme: an enzyme that binds to other molecule(s) in addition to their substrates. These other molecules effect the active sites so that the binding of the substrates to the active site is more stable.

Not the most in depth definition, but it’s the extent that I need to know it for my course.

Seriously, that’s what the definition was. But this guy asked three times for her to repeat it, even though he was holding up a copy of the lecture slides for the day AND he had his course notes (custom courseware) out in front of him. And she was saying the exact same words as what was in the course notes so I really don’t see how that was an issue.

Then again, this is the same person who asked why people do not do photophosphorylation (which occurs in chloroplasts) – so why am I even remotely surprised?

Ugh.

Anyways… Class ended on time, my prof got a standing ovation (granted, I didn’t stand because I was putting my books away and all my pens back into their case). She was a pretty awesome professor… Despite the fact that she never started class on time (ever).

I went from the building where I had my biochemistry class to the bus loop, got on the bus and then while the bus was turning out of the bus loop, I remembered that I had to pick up my vascular plants lab final. So I pulled for the bell and got off a block away and walked back towards the biology building. I met M along the way and asked if she’d picked hers up yet and she went “Oh shit. You had to remind me, didn’t you?”. Yes, M, yes I did. She did better than I did, but I rocked the section about flowers and fruit (25/25!). And I thought that was the worst station <- This is because we had to fill out table (name of structure, function of structure and what does each structure become in the fruit). It turns out that I can guess quite effectively! Most of the parts are reduced, only the ovule becomes the seed and the ovary becomes part of the fruit wall (along with the hypanthium). Oh flowers, how I love thee.

Made some headway on my studying – I finished my biochemistry assignment a day early (it’s due tomorrow, I had scheduled in time to work on it tomorrow!) so I’m planning on devoting the newly freed up time equally for biology (invertebrates zoology) and biochemistry (yay!). By Sunday, I hope to have completed problem sets 5, 6 and 7 for biochemistry and to be done studying for invertebrates (as the final is on Monday).

Also… Could someone please inform my father to stop asking me when my finals are? I’ve told him five times since I got home from school today that I:

Don’t have class tomorrow
Have my first final on Monday
Don’t want to go out to lunch with him tomorrow
And that I really do not care what he thinks about where I’m going to be working this summer

And yet he has asked me multiple times if I have school tomorrow (and does not understand why I sound exasperated when I repeat myself), he keeps on thinking I have my first final on Saturday and that I’m done by Monday and my mom thinks it’s hilarious because I’ve told her once and she’s committed it to memory already while he’s just asking me over and over again because he thinks that if I don’t have classes, that means that I’m free to run errands for him or to help do major projects around the house. I try not to laugh, I really do.

Scheduling in my schedule

Michelle — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:24:55 +0000

So this is my schedule for the next… week and a bit. Classes end on Thursday, and once that’s over (I end at 9:30am!), I’m hoping to do ~9 hours of studying per day. The first few days will focus mainly on invertebrates zoology (first exam, upcoming Monday) and then after that it’ll be ~9-12 hours/day for 3 courses (working on problem sets, practice problems, practice exams, reviewing material I haven’t laid eyes on since January, etc.). Absolutely no sleeping in – I plan to continue to wake up at 5:30am every day and get to bed before midnight.

Finals are underlined and italicized, priorities for specific days are underlined.

For every day that I don’t follow my study schedule, I’m fining myself $1 for each uncompleted task to go to a non-profit organization of my choice.

I plan on studying at home for the rest of this week (mostly because when I have class, I hate spending more time on campus than required). Next week (starting Monday, April 19th), chances are that I will be spending the majority of my time on campus (either harassing getting help from my math and biochemistry profs, isolating myself in a library or perhaps seeking out like-minded students for study groups!).

Items that are struck-out are completed. Items highlighted in red were not done.

Wednesday, April 14
Studying – invertebrates, biochem
Working on – biochem assignment, problem sets

Thursday, April 15 – last day of classes
Studying – invertebrates, biochem
Working on – biochem assignment, problem sets

Friday, April 16
Volunteering
Studying – invertebrates, biochem
Biochemistry assignment #2 due – 11:59pm Completed 04/15
Biochem Problem Set #5 Completed 04/16

Saturday, April 17
Studying – invertebrates, biochem, math
Working on – biochem problem set #6, math problems

Sunday, April 18
Studying – invertebrates, biochem, math
Working on – biochem problem set #7, math problems

Monday, April 19
Final #1 – Invertebrates zoology – 12pm
Studying – biochem, math, vascular plants
Working on – biochem problem sets, math problems

Tuesday, April 20
Studying – biochem, math, vascular plants
Working on – biochem problem sets, math problems

Wednesday, April 21
Studying – biochem, math, vascular plants
Working on – biochem problem sets, math problems

Thursday, April 22
Studying – biochem, math, vascular plants
Working on – biochem problem sets, math problems

Friday, April 23
Studying – biochem, math, vascular plants
Working on – biochem problem sets, math problems
Biochem review session 3-5pm

Saturday, April 24
Final #2 – Calculus – 7pm
Studying – biochem, math, vascular plants
Working on – biochem problem sets, math problems

Sunday, April 25
Final #3 – Biochemistry – 12pm
Studying – biochem, vascular plants
Working on – biochem problem sets

Monday, April 26
Final #4 – Vascular plants – 7pm
Studying – vascular plants

Just another one of those days…

Michelle — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:47:52 +0000

Not blogging on a daily basis = good thing. Just wanted to let you all know. Still alive, still breathing, yay! Some highlights of things that have occurred since the last time I blogged (Wednesday? Wow.)

Went to volunteering for three hours on Friday. Had a lot of fun – I cannot play crib to save my life and made my partner lose with me (haha), but I can play dominoes, at least the way that it’s played at volunteering (long term resident care home).
Been knitting! Whoot! And crocheting. Photos of all of that stuff at a later time… When I get around to finishing things, stuffing things and attaching eyes.
Watching Paralympics. CTV’s been kind of slacking in that department. They originally stated that they weren’t going to be airing the Opening Ceremony live and after (many) people complained, they decided to air it live. However, I found out that they were airing it live after I started watching something else, so I just recorded it when it aired yesterday. And has anyone watched any of the sledge hockey games? I think there might be more contact in sledge hockey than in the ice hockey games that were in the Winter Olympics. Which makes it super fun to watch.
Reading – biology and biochemistry notes, mostly.
Writing my paper on climate change for my plant biology course. I wrote about the plight of polar bears due to the change in the arctic ecosystem (we were given free choice in our topics and did not have to relate it to plants at all). Got this one done today, yay (due tomorrow at 11:59pm, online).
Did some math homework (a little bit, anyways, haha <- I need the practice).

I also rewatched some of my favourite discs from Blue Planet, I love that documentary. I especially liked the segment on deep sea fish, like the ones that produce their own bioluminescence light (which is super neat). Actually, I like all of the segments. It’s weird if you go from watching Blue Planet to Planet Earth because some of the parts are repeated in the second documentary (Planet Earth), at least in the parts where they’re talking about the marine ecosystems. Both I do love both documentaries dearly. Although the best part in Planet Earth would have to be the birds of paradise and their mating behaviour… Too hilarious.

After having not baked anything in what seems to be forever (but, as my father told me while I was measuring out flour, it wasn’t that long ago), I made cupcakes today! But I only made a dozen… And there were supposed to be more for me than anyone else, and my dad ate some of them… I hadn’t even frosted them yet (the frosting was setting a bit – a.k.a. I was taking a break). Sigh. Oh well. Some cupcakes for me then, I guess? And some for other people and no more for my dad. Since he already ate nearly half of them. He also claims that they were “rather small” and next time I should make larger ones if I don’t want him to consume the majority of them.

This was earlier today, when I was finishing up the conclusion on my climate change paper:

And this was a little while ago, after I finished knitting up a doll sweater:

Hope everyone’s been doing well from Wednesday until now and I hope everyone has a lovely Monday!

Questions for you:

Did you remember to “spring forward” your clocks and watches?
What’s the weather like you are?
What’s something interesting that you recently saw (either on tv or on the computer)?

My answers:

Yup! Well, sort of. I woke up at my cell phone and alarm clock were not synchronized anymore, so I remedied that a little bit.
Raining, right now. Rather miserable looking. =(
CBC.ca article on a cheese made from breast milk (read with an open mind, please, and remember that it’s not being sold to the public!).

Is it seriously only Wednesday?

Michelle — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:44:06 +0000

So after I moved ImaginarySunshine.com from its original domain registrar to the current one, everything’s been hunky dory. I like having all my domains in one place (makes it easier when I’m renewing or just dealing with domain things in general). However, the former registrar (which is a really popular registrar and everything – a lot of people use it, a lot of people love it, the reasons that I moved off of it because it wasn’t suiting my needs anymore, which is a perfectly valid reason for moving) keeps on sending me emails because I never closed my account with them (I no longer have any domain names registered there). The subject titles include things like:

Was it something we did? Here’s 30% off your next order.

We REALLY miss you! 30% off all orders!

And I get that all they’re doing is trying to drum up business with me, I get it. But really… I’ve set my email to filter out their emails now to go into my spam folder. Ugh. It’s annoying enough when I occasionally get email notifications from Facebook or Twitter (although, I don’t mind the Twitter ones too much, unless it’s random direct messaged spam <- another Twitter peeve!)

Anyways… Yesterday was pretty damn awesome. I got my comparative invertebrate zoology midterms back (yes, plural). While I didn’t do completely stellar on my lecture midterm, I did well enough to not fail, which is awesome. That was one of the three midterms that I had in less than a 24 hour period, so I was rather antsy about pretty much failing all three of them (which, I must say, I managed to avoid complete and utter failure in three courses). I did decent on the lab midterm, which was good to know. I got to talk to my TA about some of the questions (especially regarding the ones that I got wrong!) and figured out what I was doing wrong on the lab midterm, so that’s good.

Plus, guess who successfully extracted out all 5 hearts from a earthworm yesterday? So much fun. It was kind of exhilarating, mostly because I had to do it all through a dissection microscope and I’m not used to trying to maneuver tweezers, probes and scalpel blades while looking through any sort of scope, but it worked out well and I managed not to rupture anything.

Today went relatively well… I learned about how seaslugs respire, I learned about calculating approximate areas under a graph (yet another method…) and I also learned what happens when you light fern spores on fire (huge fireball). I got to look at my biochemistry midterm and I also spoke to my prof about it. That was a test that I did not do my best on. She spoke to me about it, I mentioned feeling overwhelmed during that week (4 midterms in one week with 3 being in an under 24 hour period, that midterm being one of those 3) and also I interpreted one of the questions incorrectly. I thought it was asking for one thing, which is what the wording led me to believe, but it was asking for something else entirely, which was a complete letdown because I thought I got that question, you know? I thought I fully understood it and even drafted out the way I was going to write out my answer on the back of the page and put a lot of thought and effort into it. I was completely disappointed in myself for that midterm because while I did try my best, it just wasn’t enough to pull off a better grade.

I’m looking forward to this week being done though. Too many up and down moments over the last few days and I’m just feeling mentally exhausted. I feel like that I shouldn’t be, because I haven’t been doing anything strenuous, but I’m also putting myself under a lot of stress, what with schoolwork and test scores and helping out around the house. I really feel like I should be more “on top” of everything right now, but I’m just not feeling it… And it bugs the crap out of me because I know I can do this, I know I can. It’s just… too much, all at once.

Little vent

Michelle — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:11:53 +0000

I’ve completely caught up on printing out lecture slides (6 slides per page, double sided – saving on paper, and somewhat on ink), stapled all the pages together, have everything neatly stacked and clipped together. Printed off a reference package, sample midterms (for next week, meep!) and assignment information (due Friday, hello working on an 5% assignment in advanced – it’s 10 multiple choice questions, clearly I’m not too worried). I went downstairs, started printing off some sample midterms and whatnot and then my dad comes in, turns on his computer and then starts asking me questions.

How do I make a new layer in Photoshop?
How do I draw a circle?
How do I make it more blue/white/red/green/etc.?
How do I do [insert something that he’s done before]?

And the thing is, since he bought Photoshop CS4 for me, I feel obligated to help him. Especially since, well, I use the program a fair bit. But the thing is… I explained all of this to him before. I even wrote out directions for him, drawing out the little icons for him. So I asked him (sounding exasperated) where the directions I wrote out for him were. He replied, “Oh, you explain things much better than the paper does.” When there is no difference from what I say and what I wrote out for him, ages ago.

So I show him everything. Twice, each. This takes about an hour. And then he asks me to write out the steps for him so he can do it himself next time. I pointed out to him that they’ve already been written out for him (with pictures!) and that he had the steps already. And then he starts in on how I just don’t want to help him and how I take everything he does for me for granted. Fucking guilt trip. I pretended to do the steps, waited for him to leave, found the original directions and then just left that on his keyboard and took all my print outs and my laptop back upstairs and then locked myself in my room. Which is where I currently am.

I mean, I’m not hardcore studying, not depriving myself of sleep (well, not entirely anyways) in order to stuff information and knowledge into my head (yet) but I do have better things to do than to explain simple things to my father (yet again) for over an hour just to have him decided that written instructions would be better. Like, you know, reading over the lecture slides, working through practice problems or just doing something that I want to do. Is that so much to ask for?

Now back to reading biochemistry slides!

How was your Wednesday?

So… Who here uses ahem on a regular basis?

Michelle — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:27:33 +0000

Douche. My psychology prof apparently scaled down everyone’s term paper grade. Just the term paper, the test grades weren’t touched, but no matter what I do with math, it doesn’t turn up the ‘right’ number. =/ Hello, emailing my prof again.

Life’s been okay the last few days. Gotten a lot of reading done for math (ohemgee, I’m such a dork, reading math), for biochemistry and my two biology classes. Yeah, total dork/geek. Go me? But such is the life of a university student! I sent a few of my biochemistry note packages/work packages to work with my mom because there’s a 3-hole punch there… Unlike at home, where I have a single hole punch where I normally use a lined piece of paper as a template. But the packages are pretty thick =/ So I asked if she could and she just kind of waved her hand and went “Just put it into my bag…” Eh, as long as I get everything back with three holes in it, I’ll be fine. I need one of those packages when I go for tutorial on Monday.

I’ve also been watching my “bean buddy”. During my first plants physiology lab, we got to plant things (sunflowers, which stay in the lab room, and bush beans, which we got to take home). Someone in class asked what would happen if we didn’t continue to water it, my prof gave the guy and look and went “It’ll probably get mouldly.” Oh, also, in biochemistry, I learned how to keep a high from recreational drugs going longer than it should. I also learned how to refine tobacco plants and cannabis in my plants physiology class.

Yeah, I’m getting a lot of education for my tuition money, yes? I swear, all 200-level science professors assume that their students drink, get high, smoke and really want to know how to make all of their students get high for longer, ahaha. After all, what are you supposed to say when your prof goes “So… Who here uses Cannabis sativa on a regular basis?” Honestly.

And lastly… A new girl traveling to my house… I think the Little Miss Sophie banner is going to get a little crowded (as it is, there’s three names on it).