SEMINAR TOMORROW

I am not as nervous as I thought I would be with my seminar less than 24 hours away. At the same time I am slightly worried I won't pass. Everything that can be done to prepare has been done. Outfit has been picked and washed, laser pointer was bought, presentation is finished, food was bought, extra slides for question has been made, I bought the special adapter to hook my mac up to the presentation thing. Everything is done, now all I have to do is practice my slide, which I have been doing for like the past week and half. I guess all I can say is I hope I pass!

Graduate School Version of Spring Break

Life has been going. Hasn't been great but hasn't been bad. I am still really nervous about my seminar I have to give in about two weeks. For the most part the slides are finished I just need to figure out what I am going to say during the seminar.

Last weekend was fun, some friends came to visit. Overall it was a great weekend of good food, wine, and fun.

As a graduate student I don't really get Spring Break off and Ray has to work during the day early. So this Monday we were both up at campus before 9am. At least we both get Thursday and Friday off, a nice four day weekend. I still have to finish this abstract for the seminar I am giving in two weeks. Overall this is a really time consuming hoop that I have to do for graduate school. Graduate school has really just been just been a lot of hoops I have had to jump. Officially I haven't failed at any of them yet, which is a good sign. All that class I have taken I have at least passed with a B. I completed my teaching requirement. And most importantly I have passed 5 CUMES! Good news this is the last stupid hoop before I can finally only work on my research.

Ray and I have been qualified for to adopt a rescue Golden Retriever. We are very excited and plan on getting one as soon as this literature seminar is over! I will be so much happier after this seminar is over, just two more weeks to go.

I HATE 681 SEMINAR

So as a second year graduate student I am supposed to give a HUGE 40-45 minute literature seminar for the chemistry department. I thought I was a good public speaker, but in the past year or so I have found out that I am not.

I have put in some good work in the presentation. Almost half of it is done, but it was the easy part, the introduction and background information. Now I have to start working on the important stuff from the literature I have read. I am giving this presentation March 29th, so I really have plenty of time to finish it. But my PI would like to see a somewhat finish version of the presentation in about a week! I have barely done any work on the second half and I still need to finish the first half.

I swear I have been so lazy about working on this presentation. There is a lot of researchy stuff that I would so much rather do. Also people who are considering coming to Texas A&M for graduate school are coming to visit this weekend and I am a mentor and my PI wants a new poster! And to top it off the deadline for a travel fellowship was today so I had to write an abstract, write a paragraph essay, and fill out the application. My PI is a little crazy and I am not the best writer, so he had to check it twice to make sure it was good enough to have his name associated with it. On a quick side note, I will be going to the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston during the month of August to give a 20 minute presentation on my current research. Super exciting, I am becoming a real scientist.

I know I am making a million excuses. Everything research wise that I needed to order and do were done today. So the good news is I think for the next week I can take a break from research and work almost solely on the presentation. I hope I can get through this, graduate students every year get through this, I WILL TOO!