First Paper

So believe it or not, I have not had to write anything substantial since I got here until now. (But it is grad school, they should just let me do research already!). Now I have a paper due tomorrow on benthic biological oceanography and I am having flash-backs of my undergraduate career of intense and unyielding procrastination; relentlessly checking and rechecking my mail, blogging, eating, doing anything but my paper--it is rearing its ugly head once again. While I have a (thankfully) natural ability to read and absorb countless scientific journal articles, having to spew out the appropriate scientific nomenclature is not my forte. Ugh.

And Grey's Anatomy is on tonight at the same time as the Office! What am I to do? Well, if I don't get cracking on this paper, I won't be able to see either one.

On another note, I had my lab on genetics today. I love my Thursday lab. It is a smaller group. I know I shouldn't pick favorites, but they are so much more attentive and curious. They all have great questions are really seem to want to learn the science behind it. I love it! It is so rewarding when I can get them interested (especially because they are all non-majors and will probably not end up taking any other science classes). We took blood today and tested whether we were color blind and other genetic excitements. They got really into it (although I did have to prick most of their fingers for them...they were a little squeamish, but they did it and that is what counts).

My dad sent me this picture. It is a picture of me!


Also, I'm developing the semi-obligatory graduate student addiction to coffee... I'll have to detox at Christmas--is it sad I'm already thinking about Christmas?

UPDATE: I just beasted out my paper and realized that it is only supposed to be two pages DOUBLE-SPACED!! What? Am I in grad school? Once I double spaced it, it was close to five pages. So..I need to make it shorter. But, I understand. Now that I'm a teacher, I know how much fun it is to read papers. There was a homework assignment due this week and my students had to talk about osmoregulation--one student gave me a paper about plants. Now, plants do osmoregulate, but we are in a zoology class, not botany!! If she had written a paper that made sense it would have been fine, but these words were literally just random groups of nouns and verbs that made no sense together. One of the sentences was "Plants are often found close to their environments." Well...yes, I guess that is true, but WHAT? Ok, I need to be nice. I'm being mean. At least she tried. I gave her a 7, even though it basically made no sense at all. I'm a pushover...