2008 New Years Predictions!!!

That's right, it's that time of year again! Since my plans to be at Denison for New Years ended up not happening, I had some extra time today to be bored (and make these predictions)!

1. I will graduate from Denison, and it will be an incredibly messy slew of emotions.

2. One of my friends will have a difficult time adjusting to life after Denison.

3. One of my friends will be presented with an amazing and unexpected opportunity.

4. Reyan will finally finish something (I’m not giving up on that one)!

5. I will show interest in another girl, but I will remain single the whole year.

6. I will go on an amazing camping trip and finally see a large predator in the wild.

7. I will come to a realization about my future which will inform my grad school search.

8. Someone I know will decide to live in a different country.

9. I will have distressing financial troubles.

10. I will spend my “time off” after graduation meaningfully.

Review of last year's predictions

So as anyone who kept up with my Livejournal should know, last year in continuing a tradition I made 10 predictions about 2007.

1. One of my abroad friends will contact me with some interesting news.

Simonne wins this one.

2. I or one of my close friends will have a near death experience.

Well, this certainly never happened to me. Or maybe it did and I don't know about it. Or maybe it happened to someone else and they decided not to tell me. We'll just go with it not being true (unless evidence to the contrary presents itself).

3. More of Reyan’s predictions will come true than mine.

Shit, I don't know. Reyan should comment on this and tell me.

4. I’m going to get an apartment :)

Haha, this one was kind of a freebie but it was true!

5. I’m going to decide if I will take time off before grad school.

Wow, again, I obviously HAD to have made a decision by now! Well, sort of. I'd be cutting it damn close if I hadn't. And at least my decision (to take time off) is the opposite of what I was leaning toward when I made the prediction.

6. I’m going to discover something interesting over the summer.

Well, stream breeding salamanders sometimes breed in Spring Peeper pond, that's interesting, right? Haha, most of what I consider "interesting" is along those lines...

7. I will go backpacking or camping at least 3 times.

Exactly three, I believe. Arizona over spring break, NC + The Smokies over the summer, and then the little overnighter at the Wildcat Hollow trail in October. Man, I really hoped there'd be more...

8. David will finally read 1984.

Haha, yeah right. But I guess he read much of the Harry Potter series, so that's something...

9. Reyan will finish writing something.

Damn it, looks like this prediction wasn't enough of a motivator. He had some cool internships though :)

10. Either I or one of my close friends will go out with someone that they really like.

Man David, you really grabbed the bull by the horns here. It was only February when you and Jen started dating. Of course I was hoping this prediction would apply to me, but what are you gonna do?

It's interesting to look back on these. I probably won't have time to post new predictions for 2008 by New Years, but David and Reyan were late as all hell last year, so I should get around to it eventually. It'll be interesting, what with graduation and who knows what the hell else afterwards.

Post-Thanksgiving

Another thanksgiving break has come and gone. And to think it's the last one I'll have as an undergrad. It was a nice break, with lots of good food (though too much sugary stuff). I did homework, of course (I had too much not to), but it was at a relatively leisurely pace. I didn't sit around like a bum and do nothing, but it was definitely relaxing, despite having work to do. And even though I didn't finish anything, I don't feel particularly stressed by due dates right now. Though I completely forgot about both the biochem take home test and the lab poster. But it's still not going to be anything like the two weeks before break were. Those were nuts.

So biochem lab today was...surprising. We were supposed to test the inhibition of tyrosinase with a water based sunscreen. Well, the sunscreen was lotion, and even though it was water based, it wasn't water soluble. The cuvette was very cloudy when the sunscreen was added, and we spent over an hour testing different concentrations and lamenting our "failed" experimental design. Meg came up with an "apple assay" idea that we could do as an alternative (slice up an apple and apply sunscreen, comparing it to various controls), and Dr. Kuhlman suggested that if we let the cuvettes sit for 3 minutes, centrifuge them, and then take an absorbance value we could still get a line (albeit with only two points, as opposed to the data-point-every-5-seconds-for-3-minutes line we would get taking the reaction rate progress like we did for thiourea). So with two sort of shaky ideas, we decided to do them both and compare them. And while neither worked as well as we would have liked, the results were consistent between the two, and they were NOT what we expected! Basically, one of the ingredients in the sunscreen was a tyrosinase inhibitor (which is the reason we tested it in the first place). The sunscreen seemed to ENHANCE tyrosinase activity for both the apple assay and the more quantitative enzyme assay. So my theory is that one of the ingredients is a tyrosinase enhancer, and its effect is stronger than the inhibition, and essentially this would allow people to tan more quickly while still being protected from UV radiation. We just don't know if there is such an ingredient in this product. But essentially we now have interesting results from two creative experiments, when we thought that we'd have nothing. And our poster should end up being cool.

I should probably mention that I FINISHED MY SENIOR RESEARCH!!!! Turned the three copies in on Monday, and now I don't have to worry about it anymore. It'll be interesting to get the comments from my readers (Dr. Homan, Dr. Schultz, and Dr. Spieles), but for now I can focus on my remaining three classes.

And now it's bed time. I love getting to bed before midnight :)

Diversity forum

Yesterday we were scheduled to have a forum on the recent acts of racism and homophobia on campus from 11:30 to 1:30. I suppose "recent" isn't exactly the right word though, as this has been happening since well before I came to Denison. It's just been very much a big topic recently. It was surprising at first, since I hadn't really witnessed most of what was being discussed. But this is probably just because I have my group of friends, who are good people, that I hang out with and probably about 5% of the campus comprises the douchebags responsible for everything. And it probably occurs mostly in areas that I tend not to frequent (ie Shorney). Anyways, the point is 2 hours of our academic day were supposed to be completely shut down in order for the entire campus to discuss the issue in Mitchell. We were put into small discussion groups and then there was supposed to be 20 minutes of open mic where people could come up and talk about what their groups discussed. Students rebelled in response to this time limit, and faculty and staff largely supported them (Dr. Kuhlman, who was representing the faculty, did at least). The librarian said that as far as she was concerned the library was closed until every last person who wanted to talk got a chance to talk. Well, the forum didn't end until after 8. That's more than 8 hours. And a decent portion of the campus stayed the whole time (a couple hundred). I'm not going to go into what was said, because quite frankly there was a lot of it. And I'm writing this post before physics, which I have to go to in a couple of minutes. Quiz and all. Plus I'm still sort of processing it all. A lot of people gave very emotional speeches, and it definitely gave me something to think about. I'm sure it will be a huge topic of discussion on campus in the coming weeks, and I don't think that the issue will go away for anyone who is currently attending Denison. I think that this will have an affect on the freshmen which will last even up until their senior year, and if the changes that were discussed begin to come about in the next year or two, students who do not yet attend Denison will be affected by this as well.

First camping trip to Wildcat Hollow

I just recently got back from camping in Wayne National Forest (the Wildcat Hollow Trail). It was just an overnight thing, and Jimmy, Amanda, Liz and I were the only ones that were able to go, but it was still fun. Liz and I know that area pretty well now, since we had to drive back for like 15 minutes in order to get signal and let Jimmy and Amanda know what was going on with the directions. Mapquest had some bad directions, and then the road off of 13 South in Corning did not have a clearly marked sign, so we wanted to make sure that they knew where they were going since it was after dark when they arrived. We made up some hobo dinners, then some scrambled brownies, and sat by the fire for a little bit. Then we went to bed, woke up at 9 (I actually slept fairly well) and made delicious M&M pancakes. My sleeping bag served me very well. I was a little warm for most of the night, actually (the low was 42), and had to unzip the side a little bit. It was much more comfortable than it was in the summer though. I guess that's just one of the problems with having a 15 degree bag. Oh well, I like it. We had to leave soon after the pancakes because Liz had powderpuff practice. Jimmy and Amanda went down to Burr Oak State Park to hike around for a little bit though.

I went bug hunting for Erin and Simonne, but didn't find much. No wood boring beetles. I got them a cricket, a bee, and some weirdo little bug that was crawling on my pack. I ended up looking for salamanders more than bugs though. I found some duskies, what I suspect is a species of dusky that I've never seen before (it had a red back, but it wasn't Plethodon cinereus), some two lined salamanders (I'm not sure if they were northern or southern), and finally some red-backs (P. cinereus) right under the rocks and logs near our fire.

It's an interesting little trail, and we'd like to go back next weekend or the weekend after. I also would like to do a day trip to Hocking Hills when the leaves are really pretty.

I thought I'd mess around with getting pictures in my blog, and so here is my senior fellow picture as a test run!

First post

I decided to make a new blog because, quite frankly, livejournal was really starting to annoy me. I think that it's about time that I phased it out. Plus there's definitely a stigma attached to livejournal which I'm not sure I would like to be associated with anymore. So here is my new blog.

For anyone who isn't quite nerdy enough to get the reference in the title of this blog, the Chamber of Mazarbul is the Chamber of Records in Moria (in Fellowship of the Ring). I thought it was an appropriate title for a blog. Especially considering the purpose of the blog. I am not going to treat this as I treated my livejournal, which was basically a place for me to write random bullshit. It may seem silly, but my primary motive for creating this was so that I could have a place that people could go to get updates about my life. This is senior year, and soon I'll have graduated. I may not see or hear from a lot of people very much, and hopefully I'll have some post-graduation readers who may find this useful. I will certainly try to keep this public (I haven't even explored the privacy options yet, so I may not have a choice there), as opposed to my livejournal which ended up being "friends only" most of the time. Also, like the occasional livejournal entry, I will probably write about any traveling that I do (similar to how Laurel made her India blog, but probably not as intensive). I guess it also just seems kind of cool to have a record of some things, for others as well as me.

And so now that I've explained why I've created a new blog all of the sudden I'll actually post a short little update about my life at this time. This is my final fall semester at Denison, and for once fall has the meaning of senescence to me, as it does for many organisms. Fall is usually my favorite season (though I do like them all), but now I'm constantly reminded of how near to the end I am. I'm trying not to dwell on this, but reminders of the fact occur every now and then. I'm going to complete my senior research this semester, which is a good thing I suppose. Even though I tend to enjoy fall semester more, it will be nice to have a laid back final semester (without physics!!!).

As of right now, I'm still not sure what I will be doing next year. And maybe it's better that way. I've always had structure in my life, as I've progressed through sequential stages of my education, and there were never really any alternatives. I suppose college wasn't the only option I could have taken, and I had to make a choice about what type of institution, and specifically where, I would attend. But now for the first time I feel like I'm not so set. It's acceptable for prospective Ph.D.'s to take time off before diving into grad school. And with my experience at this stage in my life, I feel like more opportunities are available to me. It's something that I'm going to have to look into further, but I've got a decent start. There are some internships in Alaska with the USFWS that sound really cool. It would just be for the summer after graduation, but it could open whole new doors as well. And just being familiar with Alaska would give me more confidence to possibly attempt a trip in a less mild time of year when the Aurora borealis will most likely be more impressive.

On an unrelated note, last week a got a letter telling me that I was a senior fellow for the bio department. Today Liz and I went out to the bio reserve at 6:30 am to get a good picture of me with a frog for my senior fellow picture (the pictures we got yesterday during the afternoon just didn't turn out that great). I'm glad that my picture will be appropriate. However, today I was surprised to get an email which listed only two other fellows! Last year I believe there were 8, and I just find it so hard to believe that they only chose three this year.

Anyways, I feel like that's enough for my first post. I have a ton of work to do anyways, and I should stop procrastinating and just do it (after I eat dinner, of course).