Day 28: THE T

Aaaaand we're back to your regularly scheduled programming.  Well sort of.  Actually we are back to that programming on crack -- it's the three-day-doozy I have been dreading for sometime.  Today wasn't so bad, honestly -- at the (almost) end of the day was my first exam this week, the lab practical.  It was pretty wonky -- 24 stations with diagrams/dead animals/EKG traces/etc., with a minute and a half at each, the TA timing us and calling out "Switch!" every 90 seconds.  Sort of surreal.

Prior to that was an unfortunate delay on my flight from Chicago by 3.5 hours, nullifying the point of me getting up at 4:30 in the morning to race to the airport by L (El?).  It all ended fine, though -- which brings me the point of this post: THE T (in particular the red line) in Boston (and it's speed of transportation to/from the airport) can be phenomenal, despite what this website would have you believe and despite the fact that it closes an hour before bars.  Hop on, hop off right by my car.  Speed to work.  Work.  Cram.  Exam.  Then to MIT to work on talk.  Serious day.

Best part: sushi while finishing writing the talk.

Day 16: Extension School

Since today was the last lecture (for me, anyhow), for my biology class, I figured I'd might as well use it as an excuse to voice my enthusiasm for the Harvard Extension School. Honestly, I didn't think the class (second semester of first-year bio for pre-meds/bio majors) was as well-taught as the first-semester bio class I took while an undergrad, but it was still very well done. In particular, the teaching fellow who teaches my lab section is fantastic. Harvard Extension is generally just pretty good because the profs teaching the classes are typically post-docs (or perhaps sometimes even graduate students?) at Harvard, and they know their business, yet the classes are extremely affordable. I've mentioned this class to several people I know from many walks of life in Cambridge, and many of them have had similarly good experiences there over the years. Kudos to you, Extension School.

A few days back I posted about the last lab, which was embryo development in zebrafish. I was telling my mom about how cool it was, and a day or so later she sent me a video of a mathematician/imager giving a Ted Talk on human development. I finally watched it today and, apart from the guy using the word "divine" a bit too often, I must say -- how cool.

Next week, we have our last lab, and the following is technically the last lecture, but I will be in Indiana for a visit involving my middle sister's graduation. In fact, my original tentative calculation of 144 days in Cambridge may now be a little bit off, because I'm going home for a whole week... may have to fudge the numbers a bit, woops!

Day 9: Harvard Coop

This morning on my way to work I very responsibly stopped by the Harvard Coop to pick up some lab goggles (which I had neglected to purchase before the heart dissection lab a few weeks ago, woops) for my biology class. Today we examined and stained some zebrafish embryos / larvae (see, for example, Mr. Z above -- I swear, the one we stained was identical to that image, which blew me away). I was pretty sure I was going to find this horribly dull, but it turns out that I find embryo development (at least of zebrafish) to be rather fascinating. And they do it all in like *two days* (well, almost).

Anyhow, the venture this morning into the Coop reminded me of how much I like it. I entered through the Brattle St. side entrance today, but entering the main drag off of Mass Ave is like entering into the library from the Disney animated version of Beauty and the Beast. It's seriously old-school, floor-to-ceiling books around the entire store, and if you're standing behind the cash register on the second floor looking out the front entrance, it's a pretty damn good view too.

I was also reminded of how Harvard includes MIT in its Coop in a special section: "Harvard graduate schools and MIT apparel". MIT doesn't do that for Harvard :)