bits and pieces

**I started this blog post on Sunday morning, and the original title was "living the mothereffin' dream". I think I was in a good mood.**

Thoughts that have been floating around my head the past few days/notes that I've written to myself:


2014-10-10:
You guys--I don't think I actually like molecular biology. (In the like, canonical sense of the world I mean what *isn't* molecular biology, in the same way that as soon as you use a plasmid you are doing synthetic biology but *synthetic biology* still means something very specific. Where was I? Oh yes--) So I don't think I like molecular biology that much. That level of mechanistic detail just doesn't drive me. But for some reason I love listening to talks about mitotic spindles...spindle pole bodies...microtubule dynamics. It reminds me of my childhood. Of sitting around the table listening to my parents talk. It just...feels like home. I had kind of a weird childhood.


earlier that day...

I can't stop thinking about how yesterday I pronounced 'annals' like *anals* in front of the really smart grad student in my lab.
— rachael bloom (@_rachaelbloom) October 10, 2014

I feel like that's an acceptable alternative pronunciation.
— rachael bloom (@_rachaelbloom) October 10, 2014

I mean I know you're supposed to want to be surrounded by people that are smarter than you but I'm starting to feel like the dumb one.
— rachael bloom (@_rachaelbloom) October 10, 2014

"The anals of grad school."
— rachael bloom (@_rachaelbloom) October 10, 2014

I mean seriously. Next time my PI gives a talk he's going to say, "Here's the smart one, here's the one that works hard, and here's rachael, the lab idiot." I mean everyone needs one. I'm the foil. The comic relief. The cautionary tale.


My favorite memory from a class in college...

In a human genetics lab we had to turn in a lit review thing about a genetic disease. I chose oculocutaneous albinism...because there was this great Science paper from 50+ years ago where these geneticists drew a pedigree from a Hopi Indian tribe in Arizona that had this crazy high incidence of albinism. The reason was this: albino people were held in high esteem by this tribe, and also because they were really light sensitive they had to stay inside all the time. So like, when all the men went hunting, the albino men would stay at home in their cabin things and you know, and then there is a really high incidence of albino babies being born. I love that story. Ok so--I wrote a report on this, and I was turning it in, and all the other papers were like, 10 + pages. Mine was 3. I mean I printed double-sided, but still I was SO WORRIED and I got really insecure about my assignment. But I covered everything I needed to cover! So then later, I get an A on it (like literally the only A I ever got in a science class I think because maybe I was so tickled by the subject matter) and I talk to the professor who was teaching the class, and she says Rachael, I was so worried when I picked up yours to grade because it was so much smaller than all the others, but you covered everything and you did a great job! 

I just went to find the paper, and I had forgotten the other great thing about it--the citation is "Woolf and Dukepoo, 1969" DUKEPOO.

Just call me Rachael "the village idiot" Bloom.

The reason all this came up...

I'm working on my grant for a class, and I am consistently under the page limit, because I've just said everything I've needed to say. But then I'm like, does anyone ever submit a grant that doesn't meet the page limit? I mean there's no rule against going under. Ok. back to work.