Mid-October

Wow, it's the middle of October already. It seems like this month is going by pretty quickly. I guess that's a good thing because I want to get to November so I can visit home. Time passing this fast is kind of weird though.
I guess things are going okay. The next three weeks will be really stressful though. I have a quiz, two exams, and a final project in the next two weeks. Then the experiment I was supposed to do at lab got changed today, so I have to revamp my plans about how the end of my rotation will go. I think it will be okay but I hate it when things get changed abruptly. Of course, then I have to give an end of rotation presentation at lab meeting. I hope it will go alright. I know I'm a good public speaker, but I feel like I just don't really know what I'm doing or what I'm talking about. So I worry that I'll sound like a complete idiot when I talk.
On a better note, I started biofeedback today. It's really cool. At the Student Counseling Center, you check in and get a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Then you go to the room, which is nice and dark. You get to sit in a little cubicle in a recliner that massages if you want, and you plug the headphones in so it's all quiet. Then you put the sensors on your fingers-two measure your skin conductance and one measures your heart rate. Then you use the computer programs, which guide you through a bunch of different exercises and help your practice the techniques. It's pretty cool; today I did some breathing and mindfulness exercises. It was really neat and there's a graph you can watch whenever you want which shows how your heart rate and skin conductance change based on what you do. I felt so relaxed after I was done. It was awesome and I wish I had that kind of set-up in my apartment.
Speaking of apartments, I'm sick of living with so many people crammed around me, and I'm definitely sick of living with undergraduates surrounding me. So I'm going to try and find a house to rent for next year, so when my lease is up in July I can move somewhere else. I want a house ideally, because then I would share zero walls with other people and I could have a yard and things like that. But if I find a duplex or townhouse where no undergrads are allowed, I would look into that too. I really just want quiet and more stable neighbors.

I keep spending money

The past week or so has been expensive. I'm buying a bunch of the stuff I need/want for moving, and of course it costs money. Thankfully I have all this money plus some, but I don't like seeing my money go away. The most expensive thing I bought was a new bed. I've been sleeping in a twin bed for way too long, so I bought a queen size. Yay! The next most expensive thing is a stationary recumbent bicycle. I want to keep up exercising, but I know that especially the first semester, I probably won't be doing much fencing or going to a gym. Plus I can read while I use a recumbent bike, so I can study while exercising. I like to multitask. Then it's just small stupid things like kitchen stuff, a region-free DVD player, floor lamps, stuff like that. I'm glad I've been budgeting for all this stuff for a while.
I've only got fifteen days of work left! I'm really excited to be done. Technically I get paid through July 8th because I'm using all my vacation days, but it's really only fifteen days left to show up at work. I'll miss my supervisor because she's completely awesome, but I am glad to move on.

Surprise!

I got quite the surprise on Tuesday evening. I was just checking my email for the millionth time, not expecting to have anything remotely important in my inbox, when I saw a message from the chair of Iowa State's Micro program. That would be the PhD program I just got accepted to. The title of the email didn't set off any bells in my head, so I opened it. That's when I got the surprise!!!! (Exclamation points added to make it look surprising.) Apparently the faculty in the Micro program nominated me for an AGEP fellowship! AGEP stands for the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, and they reach underrepresented minorities in science and engineering. I had heard of them before because there were some people on an AGEP internship in 2006 when I did my Carver internship, but I didn't know they had a graduate fellowship or that I would even qualify. See, my family decided to go hide in the mountains during Indian Removal, and somehow they managed to pretend to be white for more than a century (Don't ask me how; I have photos of these people and they are not remotely white.) So I have no tribal registration and no official blood quantum, and the Eastern Band has been less than helpful in my family's quest to get us enrolled. Anyway, I don't look super Native either, so sometimes I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle to prove that I'm a minority, and thus I don't even think about minority scholarships as possibilities.
But I digress! Anyhow, the faculty in the IM (interdepartmental microbiology) program think that I'm awesome enough to have this AGEP fellowship. That means that I get paid $25,ooo a year instead of $20,000, guaranteed for five years. It also means that the professor I choose as my PI will have less to have to pay out because I have some external funds of my own, so I may have a little more leeway in terms of who I can work with. I am really happy because now it's likely that I won't have to take out any loans for graduate school!

I got in!

So I was going to write this long post about my interview at Iowa State, and then I put it off for a week, and last Thursday I got an email saying that I was accepted to the Interdepartmental Microbiology PhD program! So it seems a little silly to write a huge post about my interview. Instead I'm writing a short post that says yay!! I got in! So obviously I'm going. I start in August. Now I have to find an apartment and get that part squared away.

Pending Change in my Future

Next Tuesday, I'm driving from Detroit to Ames, IA. I like Ames. Ames is a sweet place. I did my undergrad degree at Iowa State. For some reason, when I graduated, I never thought I would go back, even though I love the place. So I'm a little bemused because next Tuesday, I'm going to Ames to interview with the microbiology graduate program. I applied in the winter for the PhD program there. Initially I thought about applying to some other schools, but the more I looked, the more I realized that I didn't want to go anywhere except back to Iowa State. So I said 'to hell with it' and have staked all of my chances at even higher education on ISU. Since I've made to the interview stage, I've already passed the first cut of applicants. At this point I'm not even sure there is a second cut to be made, or if it's pretty much a given. (For the record, interviews did make a difference at Wake Forest, but if you were interviewed you were in at UMass, so I've experienced it both ways.)
Obviously, I am nervous as hell. I have an anxiety disorder to begin with, so I already fight with myself not to indulge in giant anxiety spirals of destruction. This is hard not to freak out about. Not only to I have to run the interview gauntlet, but I'm driving out there and back alone, which makes me worry about everything from the car breaking down to getting lost and ending up in Kentucky instead. Then of course once I get there, I have to run the interview gauntlet without sounding like an idiot, and there's always the question of whether I will be interrogated about the Great Georgetown Debacle of 2008-09. So yeah. I'm nervous.

Well...

Things have gotten a little weird at work. I can't really talk about it right now, but it's entirely possible my job could be moving from Karmanos to University of Michigan. I don't know much else at the moment.
In other news, I took the GRE today and got a really good score. The subject test is next month. Hopefully it will also go well.
I finished Tales of Symphonia over the weekend. As I expected it was really good, and to no one's surprise I cried at the end. Why is it my favorite character is always the one who leaves/has sad endings? I guess I just like antiheroes. So now I'm playing Animal Parade again, as well as Sunshine Islands on my DS. I'm waiting for Grand Bazaar, the next Professor Layton game, and a PS2 game called Shadow of Destiny. That will probably be my gaming docket until Christmas.