I'm waffling between two states these days.
Position One, Self-administered pep talk:
I can do it! There is so much fascinating literature out there on Alzheimer's pathology, and so many questions left to answer, so writing one little project proposal is a piece of cake. Just pick something that needs to be elucidated (like the cholinergic hypothesis and amyloid-beta production, or the self-organizational model) and think about one tiny sub-question that a simple experiment will answer. This is totally within my means and experience and might even be fun, if I let it.
Position Two, "I'm going to die":
No way. NO WAY. I only have a week. I know nothing about methods in molecular biology. How the heck am I supposed to make sense of this conflicting gobbeldygook and know what treatments to use? Buffers? Goat anti-mouse IgG? Horseradish peroxidase? SDS-PAGE? Protein kinase C? Amyloid precursor protein? MAP kinase? MAP kinase kinase? I've heard these terms before, and at some point in my life they may have made some kind of sense, but right now I'm totally overwhelmed and can barely make heads or tails of any of it. Oh, and if I can't write this one stupid paper, I will never be a scientist and maybe I'm not cut out for it anyway and why oh why did I go for the Neuro major? Blah. Blah blah blah.
Believe it or not, right now position one is holding its own... but I'm worried. We'll know by the end of the week. I'm not giving up... yet. Back to work.
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Our story so far: Currently:
A St. Louis native's ramblings and rantings during her last year at Kenyon college, Gambier, OH... and further adventures comprising her Fulbright research year in lovely Göttingen, Germany.
After 5 fabulous years (so far) of grad school in Chicago/Evanston, it's time to hunker down and keep my eye on the prize!
1 comment:
if it makes you feel better, you can sound smart talking about that stuff much much more easily than me. You even have the right vocabulary for it. The key to comps, as I learned from my own, is to be very very small about what you're trying to do. It need not be anything staggering, or even anything important. It just has to show you can do something, that you are a sponge that, when wrung, will get something wet. Easy as, well, peeing on command, to be crude [laughs]. Good luck.
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