Friday, February 22, 2008

Guitar Hero Comic


I was bored at lunch and had a sketch pad. And that's what I came up with. Yes, I know guitars have 6 strings and Guitar Hero uses five spots, whatever, I ran out of space. Click on it for a larger version.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Grad School - Biochemistry/Biophysics

I have officially been accepted at Tufts University and UMass Med. School to their umbrella biology PhD programs! Both are great schools and I am having a hard time figuring out which school will be best for my career in the future. I will also be interviewing at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Brandeis University very shortly, where I expect to get accepted to both. So my question to anyone that may accidentally wander by (or anyone that may actually purposely check this site...yeah right!) is which school is the best?

There are many factors to contemplate when picking the school of choice so I will outline what I am personally looking for:

1. Strong biophysics and structural biology departments and researchers.
2. Good core facilities such as NMR and X-ray crystallography (though most crystallography goes to the particle accelerators now).
3. Good selection of classes.
4. Diversity of research to rotate through.
5. Fun area to live.

That's about it, but that is more than enough variables to make the decision very difficult. Please help me decide!

Progression of my Procrastination

My thought process as I try to prepare for grad school interviews online: 1. "OK, I'll read this article about integral membrane protein crystallization and x-ray structure determination." 2. "I wish I was reading about how close we are to finding alien life on another planet." 3. "Well as it turns out we are very far from finding life on another planet...that's depressing." 4. "Maybe some caffeine will help get me on track. And a little snack." 5. "I'll just watch a little TV while I eat." 6. "Wow, that woman is incredibly hot, I have to see the rest of this show." 7. "I should check out Google images for more pictures of that model." 8. "Let's go down a rabbit hole of web searches." 9. "It's getting late and I'm getting tired, I should start studying." 10. Loop back to step 1.