PIGs rule the world

Grad school and GPSC bball campout

Hi everyone,

I'm glad to see the flurry of posts, and I hope that this trend does not die out. I think if the site starts getting stagnant, I'll just send out a little email to remind people to post. Perhaps one of the main disadvantages to this forum is that it does not alert via email when new posts are up, so you need to keep checking.

So I'm now in my 4th week of grad school, and I've kind of been all over the place for the last few weeks, trying to redefine my life. It's been a very strange and at times difficult transition, but I think I'm finally getting used to grad school. It's like being in undergrad, except I have fewer classes and don't know as many people (though I've been getting to know a few BME grad students). The introverted nature of all these problem sets and computer labs are quite different from the highly-conversational nature of being on the wards. So to balance out all the introversion of school, I've been happy to spend time with IM sports (which I really missed last year) and of course trivia at the Joyce.

As for my research, it's quite uncertain. My advisor has been rushing to get data out, so when I've been in the lab, I've mostly been watching, and not many things seem to working very well, which do not bode well for me. I can only hope that many of these problems get ironed out once I start doing projects in the lab. For those who don't know, I'm working with Salim Idriss, MD, PhD. He's an assistant professor in biomedical engineering and a pediatric cardiologist who specializes in electrophysiology. The main goal of the lab is to investigate T-wave alternans in the developing myocardium - what pacing protocols induce it, how does age of the heart change the ability to induce it, how does the electrical alternans correspond with the calcium concentration in the cell, etc. Certainly very complicated, and there are a lot of things I'm going to have to learn more about before getting good at this research (electrophysiology, instrumentation, cardiac cell biology). So you can see why I'm concerned about graduating on a decent time scale.

OK, on to more lively things: GPSC basketball campout. I encourage my camping group comrades to post with their own memories of the weekend, but among my favorites:
1. Our lovely vodka'd watermelon (see example here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianivarieanna/187387738/ - not ours, but I'll post pictures of ours soon)
2. Beating the PA students at flipcup, despite the distracting sewage smell emanating from their campsite
3. All those glowsticks, and for some reason walking around with two of them on my head like antennae
4. Lisa and I beating Robby and Patty in overtime in beer pong
5. Those late-night checks when Dave would yell out "Whistles, guys!" in the same way I would imagine him yelling "Mortars!" or "Ambush!"
6. Lisa, clearly delirious from lack of sleep, remarking how she loved campout and just about everyone and everything (this was maybe 4am Sunday morning)

I'll post pictures shortly - look for the link.

Keep on posting!

Ashish

posted by Ashish @ 1:57 PM