Digital Books and Online Annotation

Textbooks are obnoxiously bulky, and in my high school days, we often had homework or readings from the book assigned daily. I despised lugging around more than two textbooks at any given time, and it got to the point where I just started leaving my books at home because that's where I did my homework. Plus, we hardly opened the books in class anyway.

Fast forward to today, where more and more books are now available online. My placement has a classroom set that students may check out, but the entire textbook is also online for easier access. Students no longer have to carry a 5 pound textbook for each class when they can easily go online and read the assigned pages. The issue now was how to take notes from the readings.

With paper copies, students were free to hilight, underline, dog-ear, and write notes in the book on what they read. They could use Post-It tabs to locate the book sections they needed. Online, these activities are much more difficult. For instance, the book used in my placement just has the block of text on the screen. It's difficult to switch back and forth between screen and paper as one takes notes. If only there was a way to take notes right on the screen. Oh, and word-processing programs don't cut it because switching between windows is irritating.

Enter Scrible, a free cloud-based program with a downloadable toolbar that can help students hilight and annotate webpages and e-books. The pages can be bookmarked for later, with all the hilighting and notes intact. This would save time and paper while decreasing the clutter usually associated with printout copies of articles and books.

I heard of Scrible, as well as other annotation programs like DocHub (formerly PDFZen), through Katherine Lester's talk at the MACUL conference last week. With entire libraries online (see the Michigan e-Libary at mel.org) that are organized by reading level (like NewsELA and TweenTribune), it's no wonder that more and more teachers are making the switch to digital books and articles. And now, with the advent of free programs like Scrible and DocHub, teachers can save paper and decrease clutter because the articles don't need to be printed out.

Did I mention that all this is Chromebook compatible and free? Welcome to the new age classroom.

Technology Teach-In

I've heard that Prezi can make audiences dizzy because of their constant zooming in and out. That being said. I don't think it would be to difficult to incorporate into a lesson if the animation was limited. For a biology class, Prezi would be a great way to utilize the animation and the customizable backgrounds to teach about molecular biology. As the topic becomes more refined, the zooming in feature of Prezi helps students visualize where they are in the cell in relation to everything else, as well as what that area looks like up close.

We will be covering DNA, transcription, and translation soon, and I think it would be more helpful for students to see the big picture as the background to the Prezi, then letting the program zoom in to specific objects in the cell, like nucleus, ribosome, and tRNA. I've usually used PowerPoint or a chalkboard to teach these topics previously, and while it worked well, it was also directed towards students who have had a strong science background. In my current situation, the goal is to build up students' science backgrounds so that they're college-ready.

Prezi and a SmartBoard may sound relatively low tech for some schools, but for the one I'm working in, a communal Chromebook cart or iPad cart is not an option. We have one cart of iPads for the entire school, and demand is high. Wifi is not available, and as a student teacher, I have no right to demand wireless internet for my students or the rest of the school. Given the resources available, Prezi and a SmartBoard may be my best bet at the moment.

EduBlog Response

http://pchsfysicstchr.edublogs.org/2012/03/11/the-problem-with-problem-based-learning/

I like the idea of problem based teaching, since it gives the students more control over what they're learning and why they're learning it. That being said, it's up to the students to come up with a research question so they can gather the necessary sources and materials. The issue here is for teachers to help students identify a research question that is both challenging and feasible, and given the amount of trouble people had in my PhD days, this will be very difficult.

I do agree with the author of this post that teachers must continuously learn in order to properly guide their students; my advisor was constantly reading current literature in order to formulate new questions for upcoming grant proposals, and likewise, I had to read literature in order to find sufficient background information for my project. However, that was a doctoral program, and much of the pressure to design the experiments and search for relevant journal articles was on me. When I first started out, my advisor provided me with a few articles to kick start my reading and build my background knowledge on the lab's research interests. There was quite a bit of hand-holding as I somehow managed to stumble through my first year, and eventually found a good routine to reading paper efficiently, taking notes, and coming up with possible research questions. After I passed prelims, things started shifting and it became more on me to come up with ideas, while my advisor's role became more mentor-like rather than lecturer-like.

At the high school level, I would imagine it to be more like the first year of grad school, with less restrictions on what counted as reliable resources. While I was stuck using PubMed and books lying around the lab, there's nothing stopping a high school student from searching the textbook first for some background information. The teacher then becomes more like a consultant, asking the student about how they propose to continue their research, rather than the source of all knowledge.

The author talks about the difference between "ill-structured" and "well-structured" questions, and while most scientists, not to mention grant agencies, would like to see well-structure questions, I don't see anything wrong with starting with an ill-structured question, breaking it down, and the assigning the well-structured components to different groups. After all, scientists do collaborate...

Digital Storytelling

One of the group projects in our tech class was to present on a teaching tool that could potentially be used in our own classrooms. Last week one group talked to us about Digital Storytelling, an application that allows users to upload pictures and create a slideshow while recording audio. The end product is basically a slideshow similar to that in PowerPoint, with your recording playing in the background.

We had a seminar class this past summer, and one group had talked about how planning and teaching lessons was like telling a story, and using Digital Storytelling would be a great way to showcase the visual while creating your own narration to go with it. I have used YouTube videos to show students more difficult concepts in my own teaching, but since it was someone else's video, I couldn't tailor the video narration to suit my students' needs. Students in more advanced classes could skip over some of the introductory information in some videos and go straight to the key concept, while some students may benefit more from hearing the introductory portion as a reminder.

Digital Storytelling wasn't without its problems; we had some issues with adding more stills to our presentation, and other issues with recording and playback. Figuring out the functions of Digital Storytelling took some playing around on the app, but overall I think this would be a good way to make my own videos and narration for my students.

Guest Presenter

We recently had a guest speaker in our technology class to talk to us about cell phone use in classrooms. Before this session, we read an interview transcript and excerpts from her blog, and I thought it sounded way too idealistic. Students are on their phones all day long, and it takes some special skill to have them put down the phones and pay attention, and now she wanted to have them continue to use their phones and learn? It just sounded silly.

Her presentation to us during class made her out to be a little less idealistic about using cell phones in class, especially since she was having students complete surveys or do polls on their phones. To tackle the issue of student distraction, she asked all students to put their phones face down on the top right hand corner of their desks, and to close all laptops.

She had several activities for use on our phones, but overall it was all about using cell phones to answer survey questions. The only difference was how long the surveys were. She also mentioned logging into virtual classrooms using smartphones, but we logged into the classroom using our computers instead. Virtual classrooms, while a good idea, may not work on smartphone/tablet as well as they do on the computer, even if there is an app specifically designed for phone or tablet.

I'm sure that there are plenty of teaching tools one can do on a cell, but I remained unimpressed by her talk. It just seemed like using it to poll students on their opinions, not necessarily to help them learn more. And until I see evidence that students are learning when they're whipping out their phones to do these silly surveys, I remain skeptical.

Technology in my Placement

The high school classroom has changed considerably since I graduated; all of my high school classrooms had whiteboards or chalkboards, with a separate projector screen that rolled into the ceiling. The only place we had internet was the computer lab, and USB flashdrives were just starting to enter the market.
Fast-forward to today, where I'm currently student-teaching at a high needs school about 30 minutes away. All the classrooms have chalkboards, but half the chalkboard is covered with a SmartBoard and its projector. We also have a communal cart of iPads that can be checked out for student use. That being said, there is not much else. The staff computers in the classrooms are old desktops that run Windows 7 on machines designed for Windows XP, while the only computer lab is in the school library. WiFi is spotty on days it actually exists, but most days there is no WiFi unless the teacher brings in a separate router, which is part of the communal iPad cart.
While I can see how fancy technology can enhance learning, I think that technology can also distract students from engaging in class. So many students, especially during the first two periods, are on their phones between discussions (or are permanently stuck to their phones no matter what else is going on). Without WiFi, they dig into their data plan. Imagine what would happen if there was open WiFi at the school.
The SmartBoard in the class has its own pros and cons. I like it since it allows me to mark up my presentations in real time, but since it takes up half of the only existing chalkboard, I have limited space. Somehow when I teach, I take up as many chalkboards/whiteboards as possible. So when I fill up the SmartBoard, I only have half a chalkboard left to write, which leaves me with the dilemma of what to erase first, especially if I'm moving through material at a much faster rate than the students are accustomed to, but more on my lesson-pacing later. The SmartBoard, like all the other electronics in the classroom, is prone to freezing, shutting down, and general malfunction. At least with the chalkboard or whiteboard, the only issues I anticipate are running out of writing utensils and not having an eraser.
Overall I enjoy my placement without the myriad of fancy technology available. It's not a matter of training staff to use the technology, but also knowing what to do in case fancy technology fails. I prefer students to be less distracted, hence still looking for whiteboards in every classroom I'm in.

Connections Across Disciplines

I just started at my placement school last week, and although I'm working primarily in a science classroom, my mentor teacher is letting me observe classrooms outside of my focus area. Being a math minor, I took off during planning period yesterday to observe a geometry classroom, where the students were working with line segment addition/subtraction and line segment congruence. I was surprised by the amount of class discussion and variety of activities that students did, which led to them coming up with the theorems of segment addition and congruence on their own.

I wasn't surprised at the inquiry based learning and student exploration, since this was common in my college science classes. I was really surprised that discussion-based learning could exist in a math class. We didn't have such discussion in my own high school math classes. I had the same teacher for both Geometry and Algebra II, and although we did do some exploration on our own, our teacher did most, if not all, of the demos that would show us concepts. For example, when we were learning about conic sections, we first read the definition of a parabola and an ellipse. Just reading the definition of a parabola, with strange words like "focus" and "directrix", was enough to bore most students to tears, but the activity using wax paper, where we drew a point and a line, then repeatedly folded the paper so that the line and point intersected. Multiple folds resulted in a parabola appearing in the wax paper.

Unfortunately student explorations like the parabola in wax paper were few and far between. Often times we would break up into small groups and work on problems, so seeing this geometry class where students came up with the theorems themselves was a very different approach and needed few materials aside from a ruler and a worksheet.

For classrooms that have more access to technology, three of my classmates designed a math lesson using GeoGebra, an interactive drawing program that allows students to draw and manipulate graphs, figures, and angles. The lesson was about drawing lines when given points, then drawing lines with given equations using GeoGebra. The purpose was for students to see the connections between equation and the drawing of the line on the coordinate plane. Since GeoGebra shows equations, it was also important for students to calculate the equation of the line on their own before checking with GeoGebra, providing them with a way to check their work and discuss the meaning of vocabulary words like "slope" and "intercept".

I'm really enjoying the interactive way of teaching math, and I've never thought of math as being very interactive before. When I was volunteering at summer school in Algebra I, the teacher used GeoGebra to graph parabolas, showing the equation along with the graph. He could drag the parabola to make it wider, narrower, or upside down, and the equation would change along with it. Students were much more engaged, and better understood the relationship between the graph shape and the effect of changing the x^2 coefficient in the equation. This also meant that students decreased rote learning and had higher retention, while teachers found it easier to scaffold future information.

Looking back, I wish I had a more interactive math experience. I loved my math classes in high school and college, but I never thought about math as being inquiry-based until now. I will also admit that I didn't see the connection between the x^2 coefficient and the parabola shape until well after I finished Algebra I.

Organizing Online

When it comes to teaching and tutoring, I'm pretty old-fashioned. I make good use of whiteboards, chalkboards, pads of paper, anything I can use to write, doodle, and demonstrate my way through a lesson. I heavily rely on PowerPoint to show pictures and animations, and occasionally will use YouTube clips. It was effective, but if I had to make slides from scratch, like I did when teaching community college, it could be a real pain to gather the necessary sources (pictures, text, video) and put them in a logical order.

I've never even heard of Blendspace until last week, when I had to do a small presentation on it and how I could use it in my future classroom. I could upload files from my computer onto the site (called a "canvas"), or I could drag and drop videos, links, photos, and other resources straight from the web, which meant no more opening a gazillion windows trying to gather all the necessary media. Furthermore, since I synced Blendspace with my Google and DropBox accounts, I could drag and drop files from my Google Drive/DropBox onto the canvas. It also meant I could watch YouTube clips right on the canvas, instead of clicking on a link and getting transported to a new window. Much easier.

Blendspace also has an assessment feature, which allows instructors to make multiple choice questions right on the canvas. Although I would not substitute this feature for written exams and quizzes, I think it would be an excellent way to poll students' understanding during class, like many of my college professors did.

That being said, Blendspace can also be used to goof off. When toggling around with mine, I uploaded a presentation on cell respiration and then proceeded to fill the rest of the canvas with video clips from the Dark Knight trilogy and Season 4 of Archer.

I will admit that Blendspace definitely breaks up the monotony of a chalk talk.

Integration

We recently had a group project called "Connections Across Disciplines" where we created a lesson plan based on our specialties. My group examined the use of games, this time a protein-folding computer game called Fold-It, to introduce students to protein structure, protein function, and scientific research. The original idea was to have students explore this game on their own devices -- a laptop, tablet, or smartphone -- until we realized that Fold-It only worked on a computer and had to modify our lesson plan accordingly.

I was introduced to Fold-It in grad school when we were discussing current topics in protein research. From a scientist standpoint, Fold-It generates useful new information about how proteins fold and contributes to current research. From a high school student's stance, the game could potentially teach them about the importance of protein structure and function in biological systems. It also gives students a better picture of what proteins look like, instead of staring at a blob and trying to make believe it's an enzyme. Looking back, I wish I had a chance to use this game in my own AP Bio class; it would have made more sense to me to play around on the game and manipulating protein side chains on the computer instead of memorizing the definition of secondary and tertiary structure.

It wasn't until college when I started seeing more connections between my science classes, as well as across disciplines, like in science and non-science courses. I think it's unfortunate that we don't teach classes in a more integrated manner and help students better understand the purpose and application behind the things they're learning. The protein-folding game, for instance, uses computers and a game-like modality to teach students about macromolecule function. It also exposes students to the research side of things, making it clear that there is much to learn beyond of what is in the textbook. On the flip side, sewing different pieces together may make it confusing for students who like to compartmentalize information, and I can certainly anticipate students complaining about me putting a research twist on practically everything. I'll justify it with "We're learning about it because it's awesome!" Enough said.

Games and Learning

UM's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) has a graduate teacher certificate, and one of the requirements was to attend a series of seminars. One of the seminars I watched was one about the use of games in the classroom setting. Not playing video games or anything like that, more like the use of the gaming model in the classroom. The professors seemed to focus on two things:

a. all players (students) starting from the same level and earning points with missions (participation and homework)

b. good grades on quizzes and exams meant that the student could "level up" (i.e earn more points toward a better grade and possibly get opportunities for extra credit)

Under his model, all students started off at no points and they structured class so it seemed like students were earning more points toward their goal grade. They contrasted it to the "traditional" class structure, where all students seemed to start at an "A" and they'd lose points due to not turning in homework, failing exams and quizzes, or not participating.

I think the presenters were onto something about remodeling the classroom to engage their students, but I'm not sure if I would take it as far as they did. For instance, their model made it seem like quizzes and tests should be optional, but not taking it would mean a loss of data on student learning. That being said, there are quite a few things we can take away from gaming, like teamwork, determining your own fate (to a degree), and strategy.

***
I'm seeing an increased use of games in learning; I'm working in an 8th grade math class this summer, and our mentor teacher uses a mix of games and worksheets to make students learn. Most computer games I've seen this summer have been Minute-Math type problems -- the more problems you solve, the faster your spaceship/bike/moving object goes toward the finish line. Or you solve similar problems to blast away evil robots. My favorite ones involve strategy and math, like a card game the teacher called "Fraction War". We had a full deck of cards, where all face cards were worth 10 and aces were worth one. Each player drew two cards and had to pick which one was going to be numerator and which one would be denominator. My student quickly realized that he could make improper fractions and win the game. I saw this as a welcome twist on the standard games that I had in school, mostly similar to Jeopardy or solving math problems to get the answer to a corny joke. This just seemed so much better.

On Student Achievement and Standardized Tests

Apparently the new fad is making standardized tests computer-based instead of on paper. I can see how computer-based testing would be faster and easier to score, and allow for a wider flexibility in testing dates, but it would also mean ensuring there are enough computers for all Xth graders across the nation on testing day. Furthermore, the test interface may not be the most user-friendly and would require schools to take an extra day to teach students how to use the program. While devoting an entire day to making sure students are clicking the right buttons and using the correct text box sounds excessive, some test interfaces are extremely cluttered. We took an assessment called Smarter Balanced in class, a standardized test in competition with other achievement exams in Michigan like the ACT/ASPIRE and MEAP. Like the latter two exams, Smarter Balanced tests students on math and reading skills.

I chose to work on the math section during our practice run in class. While the math was doable, I found myself scrambling to find scratch paper, which was not provided. Many other students said they were confused by the vast array of icons on the screen, and that it took a while before they could find the one marked "next question". Students taking the reading section of the test found it irritating that they couldn't underline/hilight/write notes on the given passage, making information hunting for answering questions difficult, and everyone noticed that they couldn't skip questions.

Don't get me wrong, I think if we have to take standardized tests, then computer-based is the way to go. However, several items need to be taken into consideration:
1. Give students a brief intro to how to use the testing interface. At the very least, tell them where the buttons for "next" and "previous" are located.
2. Allow hilighting and underlining in the reading comprehension portion.
3. Provide scratch paper for the math section.
4. Change the program so that students can skip ahead in a given section, but cannot skip sections.
5. Make the test computer-adaptive. It minimizes cheating since there's no guarantee that two students will have the exact same question.

I see why the general public values standardized tests; it serves as a benchmark for measuring student achievement and one can use the data to measure achievement across counties, states, and regions. However, using standardized tests as the main or only way to measure student achievement and teacher efficacy is a lousy idea. Test scores will be making up 40% of teacher evaluations in Michigan starting this year. Most of the students I've worked with are diligent and conscientious, but may be bad test takers. Standardized tests ignore this and give everyone the same amount of time. Furthermore, we place so much value on exam scores that we forget the nuances in the classroom -- student interest in the subject, student improvement in the class throughout the year, student-teacher interactions, and students' nonacademic life, among others, that could influence test scores.

Unfortunately we still have to follow the laws written by a bunch of empty suits with absolutely no teaching experience.

Education as a Social Experience

I always thought that getting an education was preparation for my future job. At least that's what my parents, teachers, and society told me, as if once you found a job, you could stop going to school. It wasn't until high school when I figured out the difference between "going to school" and "learning", and I spent most of college trying to figure out how to learn properly. Once I started the biology graduate program, I was hardly taking classes - going to school - but continued to learn by hands-on experience and data analysis.

I find it interesting that John Dewey sees education as a social process, stating that the school should serve to expand on values that children learn at home. I only partially agree with that statement; I was born overseas and emigrated to the United States when I was 3. My parents were first-generation Asian immigrants, and many of the values that we had at home were vastly different from the values I learned at school. Asia has a rather collectivist outlook, while the US pushes children to be their own individual. As I tried to do the latter to fit in, the more my parents seem to disapprove. Secondly, as I mentioned above, education was not a process of living for me until I went to college. From kindergarten to senior year, I had a very compartmentalized view of school -- go in, learn a bunch of stuff I may or may not remember, go home, do homework, repeat. It wasn't an ever-changing process, it was autopilot. In college, I started to realize that social collaboration was an important component for effective learning, and my favorite college classes were heavily based on discussion. Education, therefore, became that fluid process Dewey wrote about, and I became aware of several other ways to acquire information aside from rote learning.

It took me a while to understand education as a social process, and I wonder why nobody ever mentioned that to me. It was always "you'll need to do X in the future" or "because you'll gain skill Y, which you'll find useful in the future". But what these people didn't realize (and I just realized it myself) is that having an education forces us to be better people... for the most part anyway. I despised group work in elementary school because it meant I had to work with people I didn't necessarily like, and I tried really hard to avoid recess because it meant I couldn't hide in a corner with a book. As I passed through high school, college, and grad school, I realized that (a) even the people I didn't like initially grew on me, (b) while group work meant more opinions, but it also meant more collaboration, and (c) hiding in a corner all the time with a book is horrendously depressing.

On a parting note, I think education really forced me to transform. I've usually taken the role of the observer, because playing any other role in the classroom meant that I would have to voice my opinion. What if I embarrassed myself? What if I was wrong and everyone thought I was dumb? I eventually became comfortable with voicing my opinion and risking looking stupid in college, and in graduate school found out that research is all about the risk of looking/feeling dumb. Yes, I would have a hypothesis, but there was never a guarantee that it was the right answer. The only thing I could do was to discuss with my advisor, and it took me over a year to realize that he didn't care about the "correct" answer, only that I had sufficient evidence for my argument....and so going back to where I learned to propose my opinion and speak up. Through an education.

The Past Year

I haven't worked on this in over a year, during which I took a 4-month leave of absence from the lab to decide whether or not I wanted to continue in the doctoral program. My leave started in May 2013, and I immediately started looking into education volunteer opportunities and faculty openings at community colleges. I spent most of June volunteering at the Hands-on Museum, while playing phone tag with the public school administrators, who helped me land a volunteer spot in summer school. I worked with high school kids taking Algebra and Geometry from late June to July, and in the meantime got hired as an adjunct science instructor at a community college and an academic mentor in the athletic department. All this happened while I was looking into teaching certification programs and doing private tutoring, so it was safe to say I had a very productive leave.

In August I went back to lab to tell my advisor that I decided to leave the PhD program and pursue a Masters in education. He didn't seem surprised, and was glad to see that I found a better-suited field of study. When September rolled around, I started working for athletics, prepped lessons for my community college class, and did private tutoring while writing my personal statement for graduate education programs. Summer school and private tutoring experiences made the statement easy to write, and although I had to take two math classes since I declared a math minor for teaching, the whole application process was relatively problem-free.

Although I had no doubts about the application process to the School of Education, I often thought about the (perceived) ramifications of leaving the doctoral program. What did my advisor think? What about my friends and potential employers? I felt like I broke a promise to my advisor, and didn't want to think about the investment he makes in any given student, just to have them leave without their PhD. I thought my five-year Masters was going to be difficult to explain to potential employers. Most importantly, I kept hearing voices, specifically that of H, a so-called grad student mentor who was not supportive at all, telling me that people who leave the doctoral program are "losers" and should be condescended upon. In reality, my advisor was very supportive in my decision and wrote a letter of recommendation to the School of Education, giving me a chance to attend on fellowship. Employers didn't seem to care about how long I was in school, as long as I had a valid reason for leaving; my friends were glad that I found a field I enjoyed, and as for H, he's somewhere else and we're no longer speaking.

I started my new education program about a month ago, and will be done in June of next year. Incidentally, I have to keep a blog for one of my classes, so I'd thought I'd write a transition post between programs. I originally started The Eastern Blot as a personal project while I moved forward in graduate school, documenting the excitement, optimism, isolation, and change (among others) that I felt on a monthly basis. I'm hoping to continue writing as a combination of class requirements and personal reflection.

Hiatus/Faith in Science, Revisited

Last March I decided that I would take a three month break from writing more posts, which eventually turned into a full year of not writing. Over the past year I've accumulated enough material to resume posting about my experiences with grad school and where I am now.

Over the course of my grad school career, many of the people who started school at the same time as me have left the PhD program and pursued other endeavors. I feel a slight decline in morale every time I hear that someone (particularly someone I know well) is leaving the program, but the past year has been different because one of my labmates decided to leave grad school. She left at the end of May of last year.

I also had a series of frustrating technical difficulties last summer, which, combined with a loss of motivation, pessimism about my project, and the departure of my labmate who worked hours as odd as my own, led to a rapid decline in data output. It got to a head last November, when I was seriously considering leaving grad school and getting a terminal Masters degree; the only thing stopping me from doing so was the prospect of having to explain to potential employers why it took me over five years to get said degree.

The urge to leave struck again in late January, although I started exploring more options and found that I could take a leave of absence and come back afterward to finish. I also considered switching labs, but in the end, neither option would work well because (a) the project doesn't stop for me and (b) switching labs and starting over would mean it would take even longer before I got a doctorate.

I've talked to both current and former grad students, and my impression is that everyone in any sort of post-college education hits a wall sooner or later. Med students are "lucky" in respect that they can take time away from school, pick up where they left off, and graduate with the next class. Unfortunately, if I left for the summer, my advisor doesn't just have my project sit there until I come back. From November to January, I wondered what I got myself into, that this was not what I signed up for when I made the decision to go to grad school, and why I couldn't find it in myself to keep cranking out data at the same rate as before. I was almost convinced that I made the wrong decision and that I should have stopped earlier and gotten a Masters. But in the end, I knew that although I didn't want to write grants for the rest of my life, I wanted to teach at the college level, which required that I earn my doctorate. My advisor and I had a series of talks about that goal, and while he would revise his expectations of what constitutes a sufficient PhD, I would seek help and do what it takes to complete one.

I talked to one of my friends in med school recently; she told me that she had a string of bad luck over the past few months, but it straightened out somewhat in the end. We talked more about hitting the wall, and having that experience of questioning your life choices and panicking when you suddenly wonder if you made some terrible mistake (i.e. going to more school). At this point, neither of us feels like we're banging our heads on a wall, and most of the self-doubt is gone, although we would like a guarantee that what we're doing is the right thing. But for that, only time will tell.

Scientific Advancement

A number of us in lab have papers in manuscript that hopefully will be submitted/published soon. In the interim we were talking about the current competition in science -- how it's changed from the past and how it might change once we all graduate and (maybe) have our own labs.

The topic of housekeeping genes was brought up at lab meeting recently. Housekeeping genes are always expressed and we use it as a marker for (c)DNA quality. Usually we run a reaction with just one housekeeping gene, but my advisor stated at the meeting that some journals request that authors run their experiments with two or more, just to double-check, because sometimes these genes are not expressed at a constant level, even though we expect them to. While this seems like a minor change, many times reviewers will send a paper back with a list of control experiments that need to be done, which may take anywhere from a week or two to a couple months.

In my senior year of undergrad, I took a class called "Evolution, Development, and Genetics" (i.e. "evo-devo"); it was a discussion-based class where we read papers every week and then talked about trends in the field. One of the first things we read was a Science paper that was considered the founder of evo-devo. Our assignment for this paper was to rewrite the abstract because the original one was only a sentence long, and in today's standards, is unacceptable. The paper itself proposed some really new ideas, but in today's standards, was lacking in terms of data. The authors basically ran a series of proteins on a gel. Which makes me wonder -- do we need to do more work today to get published...compared to, say, 40 years ago?

Science has advanced rapidly in the past few years, which I think is the main reason why it takes "more" work to publish in a good journal. One of the best examples is PCR, which used to take (literally) all day. At that time, the researcher would sit in front of multiple hot-water baths, and drop the tubes in, wait a minute or two, and go on to the next water bath. Oh, and they had to add fresh reagent after each cycle... for about 30 cycles. Now, we just stick all the tubes in a machine and have the machine do it while we go work on something else. People are coming up with new ideas and new techniques all the time, and everything points to increased efficiency.

I have a feeling that 30 years from now, I'll look back at my thesis and say "is that all I did??"

Data Dump

The professor next door teaches an upper-level undergrad class on mammalian endocrinology. Last month he asked me to give a guest lecture in his class about my research, with a request to spend at least 50% of my lecture on background material before segueing into current information. I was (kinda sorta) starting on a literature review for lab, so I made my slides based on the review draft and thought I was good to go... until I practiced it in front of my lab.

One of my labmates said that I essentially zipped through 4 papers' worth of data in five minutes, which would be too fast for the audience, who , according to my labmate, would be drifting in and out of consciousness. My advisor said to make the slides more textbook-ish and not show too many cutting-edge things. That's when I found out the statement "because it's cool" is not a good enough reason to show/talk about a specific data set.
I was surprised at the amount of information I had to remove from my first set of slides. I think that "research seminar mode" has become my new default, where I give minimal, but crucial, background information and then immediately jump into what's new. This way, I don't have to feel like I'm repeating myself a million times in order to get a point across.

That being said, it's been difficult for me to realize what constitutes a data dump for an audience of undergrads. During my own undergrad career, one of my pet peeves was when the instructor would write complete sentences (paragraphs, even) on their slides and spend all hour reading off the screen. My issue seems to be the opposite; I'll put six rectangles on the slide and say that they're hormone receptors. Then I'll start talking about how the receptors work, which leads me to signaling pathway A and how it works. After that, if I really start to lose myself, I'll start talking about homologies within species. One of my other labmates said it best: "If you were an undergrad, would you REALLY care that tyrosine 1127 in species X is responsible for signaling?"

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My lecture was on the morning of February 14. The professor had a last-minute trip out of town, so I essentially took over the class. Everyone seemed really engaged and I didn't get funny looks, so I assume it went well.  :-)
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The title of this post comes from a phrase that an emeritus professor introduced us to when he was talking about his grad school days at MIT. It's when you go through so much data per unit time that the audience can't process it all fast enough to ask questions (i.e. question your technique).

Impulsivity

Things haven't been quite the same since I came back from overseas. I'm not sure if it was the concept of vacation that threw me off from my usual work schedule, or the fact that after I came back, most of the experiments I ran yielded negative results...which leaves me feeling like I'm scrambling not just to produce something, but also to get some solid footing on where to go next. Unfortunately, that can lead to impulsively doing experiments and going around in circles wondering why things don't work. The good news is that I think I've calmed down enough to figure out what I've been doing wrong in terms of experiment design and technique, so there's some solace that things will work out "correctly".

The other part I've noticed lately is how I have a tendency to zone out in a non-lab setting. The best example would be two weeks ago, when someone I know was visiting the city with their boyfriend, their high school friend, and the latter's married friends. It was a slightly awkward position for me to be in (especially when someone said "everyone's getting married or pregnant!"), but for most of the time I felt like I was mentally absent. My half-baked explanation is that I had spent the entire day in lab making a reagent, and was getting antsy on when I could go back and finish it. My mind doesn't wander nearly as much when I'm actually in lab, but then when I go home, I start thinking about research again (especially why things aren't working the way I want them to), which makes me slightly hypertensed.

I've been able to clear my head with dance class and running, the reason being that I can't think and dance (or think and run) at the same time unless I screw up the choreography or slow down my pace. I'm hoping this whole restless-impulsiveness phase goes away soon. Either that or I'm going to run 5 miles to relax.

The Road Behind

As 2011 draws to a close, I've been thinking about how I got here, as a grad student working in science. I hear a lot of stories about how various people were interested in science at an early age, how they chose their college major and their current career. It seemed like for those people, everything had been planned out early on, when in reality, the road leading up to a chosen profession is a rather twisted one, with a couple lucky accidents along the way.

I was pushed toward math and engineering at a young age, and frankly, I didn't enjoy it. I particularly detested the plastic Erector sets my dad bought me, which were supposed to become helicopters and tanks if you followed directions and built them correctly (which I usually didn't do). I would have much rather gone to dance class and played with dolls instead of building Lego models, and my dad knew it, so as a compromise, I got to build a Lego model of a dollhouse. Beyond memorizing dinosaur names, I had limited exposure to science in grade school, and it wasn't until third grade when I got my first official science lesson on ear anatomy, where we touched on how sound is conducted through the inner ear and the information relayed to the brain. I thought the lesson was interesting, but didn't have much motivation to learn more. Besides, that memory was diluted out later with other science lessons, like taking apart owl pellets and assembling basic circuit boards. The best memory from grade school science lessons was the time where some wildlife expert came to our class and brought an assortment of animals for us to learn about. His menagerie included a chinchilla, a python (which some students wore around their neck, then promptly got very red in the face because the animal was so heavy), and a Komodo dragon. We also had a guinea pig and a tarantula as class pets, which were fun to observe, and I think that really got me interested in animal life, even though my exposure at that age consisted of cleaning the guinea pig cage.

I hardly learned anything in middle school science either, and the part I did remember involved dissecting that earthworm right before lunch in 6th grade, then immediately forgetting why we had to do that. We raised monarch butterflies in class, and watched many nature documentaries, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, after 6th grade, my parents must have thought that I wasn't learning enough of what they considered important (read: science, math, engineering), because they got me a book called "1000 Science Questions and Answers...With Illustrations!" and told me to read it cover to cover, which I think I did, but only remember the section on animals. This book was followed by The Handy Science Answer Book, which I got for Christmas one year when I was in late middle school, and was also required to read cover to cover. The animal life section in these two books focused mostly on behavior instead of physiology, so everything I gleaned from those tomes fell under ecology (i.e. food chain), unaware of the existence of other fields like physiology, development, and genetics, all of which I'm doing now.

In high school, I told my guidance counselor that I wanted to go to med school, but in retrospect, I was making that up because I didn't have a clue as to what that entailed, and didn't have much exposure to what else was out there (aside from engineering, but my dad is an engineer and I was under the impression that it was all about cars, which I found dull). The counselor suggested that I take AP biology, which was the first lucky accident, because I loved everything about it...so much that I decided to major in it in college. The AP class gave me a wide range of interests, and I chose plain "Biology" over Cellular/Molecular and Ecology/Evolution because it gave me freedom to take any bio class that sounded interesting and still have it count toward the degree. Most of my classes fell under the Ecology/Evolution category, although if I knew then what I know now, I would have changed my major to the cellular/molecular side.

The second lucky accident happened junior year of college, when I took developmental biology (which was awesome) and its corresponding lab class (which was even more so). My GSI for the lab class, who was also one of my current advisor's former students, asked if I had considered going to grad school because I had noted my interest in animal development. And here I am.
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My interests have changed even in grad school; on my application, I listed stem cells as one of my interests, but throughout my rotations I found out that I'd much rather be dealing with animals than growing cells in a dish. I never would have guessed that what I'm working on now would consist of animal development, genetics, physiology, and evolution, given that my early interests were something so far removed from it. I think I owe it to my AP teacher and my GSI, because otherwise I'm not sure I would have found something that I loved so much to study it for 8 years... and counting.

Realistic Optimism

Over the past few years I've heard from various people that I'm "blissfully optimisitic". One time I was stepping off to bus to go to school, and some random guy came up to me (while I was zoned out on my headphones) and said "I see you all the time and I have to ask: why are you so smiley?" Another person told me multiple times last year "I can't believe you're so happy all the time." Another time during recruitment weekend I ran into someone on the walk to lab and they were talking about how only first and second year grad students are asked to host a prospective student, since at that stage of their career, they're still "happy and excited about their research," while senior grad students are stereotypically bitter and irritated that they haven't graduated yet.

Looking back on my blog posts starting from undergrad commencement, I've definitely taken a more serious tone in my writing about the grad student experience. I've rarely written about my project as of late and have focused more on experiences outside of lab and the changing perceptions of myself and other people. However, that doesn't mean that I'm not excited about my work anymore (my advisor recently told me that I seemd very optimistic about experimental outcomes). I think it's more of the realization that if experiments don't work, there's really nothing I can do except think it over, change a thing or two, and rerun it.

...which takes care of my life inside the lab. Outside the lab, things become very different. Sometimes I find it difficult to simply be happy when I'm surrounded by subtle pessimism, not just about lab, but also about their lives outside of lab. Two people I know have made their love lives a running joke by saying things like "what love life?" and "yours can't be more of a joke than mine!" While their comments may be on the light side of things, there are other people who say things like "marriage makes you a better person." I know one person who told me that she cried herself to sleep because she didn't have a boyfriend on her birthday. It's hard for me to deal with stories like that, especially if I'm being constantly bombarded with messages that  I can't be happy as I am, or that I simply can't become a better person because I'm unmarried.

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My cold-emailing-club-directors-and/or-instructors is finally starting to pay off; I've started dancing again and got involved with a science outreach group. And I'm definitely seeking out happier people to be around.

Isolation and Impatient Optimism

Several older students told me that everyone in grad school eventually enters the "bitter grad student" phase in their career, and I think that time is around now. I don't even have to talk to other people about grad school and research to realize this. I've noticed that many people I talk to don't have any enthusiasm to do anything...social or otherwise. For the past few months, getting people together to do something fun has been (and still is) like pulling teeth. I usually get some variation of the excuse "when I get home from lab I just want to sit and do nothing," which makes me wonder (a) if I'm not working hard enough in lab, since I still have energy, and (b) if I get cabin fever way faster than everyone I know.

   I think part of the problem is that by now, we've settled into a life of routine...we get up, go to lab, do work, come back, and crash, only to repeat this cycle 6 or 7 days a week for the next couple years until our advisors say we can graduate. While routine can be comforting (sometimes), it also is a recipe for isolation. And after a long time, it becomes a hard habit to break. The other problem is that we're surrounded by the same people day after day, and opportunities to meet new people who aren't in the same field (or the same lab, for that matter) are scarce to nonexistent.

   One of my friends goes to med school at MSU and he came to visit several weeks ago. We talked about some of the trends we've seen in people as we go through grad school: the pessimism, isolation, and general laziness which gets progressively worse with time. He said that the best way to combat it is with optimism, "impatient optimism" to be specific. (The phrase came from a graduation speech that Bill Gates supposedly gave at Harvard.) It means to be happy, but also to be proactive in pursuing the activities that bring happiness.

   I really think I've been trying to get people together, but it's not working. At the same time, I've also looked into other activities that branch off of what I liked to do when I was younger (dance, for instance) as a way to fulfill my mental health time. Several people have told me that I should stop trying so hard, but I don't think that passivity is the best way to solve this problem.

   I don't think I've ever felt more alone in my life.