Last Monday, I defended my Prospectus of Thesis Research to my Committee. Bottom line: I passed (my advisor said I did an "exemplary job"), meaning that they accepted my plan for my thesis research. In essence they said, if you do all of this, we'll give you a degree and a handshake. And one of those funny colored hoods. And my sweet little mom came too. So, it was a big day! Picture caption: those are mouse lymphoma cells (the circle outlines are their cell membranes, the part of the cell I care about most in my research). The colors represent regions where a fluorescent probe called laurdan is giving off light in a certain way, which tells us how regularly ordered the phospholipids in those regions are. We take the pictures with two-photon excitation scanning microscopy. Which basically means we get to sit in a totally dark room with a huge laser hooked up to a microscope and take lots and lots and lots of pictures until we get ones that look as good as this one. It's pretty awesome. And it means we just have to take trips to the microscope facility in Irvine, California...That's a little slice of the life of Rachel the Grad Student.
5 comments:
COOL! I wish I was that cool and smart! I saw your picture on one of the mentoring posters in the Widtsoe and I thought, "I know her! Cool!"
Ooooooh. Cool. You are a genius! And great job getting your research approved. That is quite an accomplishment! Sometimes grad students get rejected a million times before their proposal for research is finally perfect enough for their committee.
Wow.
Someday . . . I want to be like Rachel.
Except without the whole "science" thing.
Rachel, you're my hero. And you're a genius besides. I can barely spell lymphnode. And I'm an English major. ::sigh::
It's people like you that make me glad I know people like you. You're amazing! And congrats on getting your thesis approved!
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