Frog Blog

Here at Michigan, EEB graduate students go through qualifying exams (colloquially called “prelims,” or “paper, seminar, and oral”) in the fall of their second year. Prelims “start” when the paper is due (Oct 12th this year), and they must be completely finished by Thanksgiving.

I finished up my prelims on November 9th and was the second student to finish in my cohort out of 13 total. Finishing early is nothing fancy; prelims are simply done based on the schedules of the student and their evaluating committee. Due to my own travel commitments (I just spent 10 days in Spain and London) and the external activities of my advisor, November 9th was the last day I could finish my prelims.

As a first year, I knew prelims were coming, and I tried to prepare for them. But it is difficult to prepare for an omnipresent review of everything you know. I did some reading, especially of classic papers (Foundations of Ecology is a super helpful collection of ecology papers that I recommend to every incoming EEB student). Especially difficult is the fact that prelims are an amorphous challenge; during the orals, professors can ask you anything within the realm of science. I definitely fielded a question or two about the general history of science and scientific reasoning.

Previous second years warned me that prelims were stressful. Of course, I acknowledged this, but I never realized how stressful they can be. Again, much of the stress of prelims comes from the unknown of orals. You can prepare your paper and presentation with plenty of time to refine and finesse. But there is literally no way to know every single subject within EEB, biology, and science in general. What is important is to know what you know and acknowledge when you don’t know enough to answer a question.

Prelims are also time-consuming. Much of the time consumption comes from reading and preparing. I don’t even want to think about how many pages of literature I’ve read over the last several months. More time comes from attending the seminars of your cohort mates in a show of solidarity and mutual support.

Now that prelims are done, I do feel a bit relieved. I’ve cleared one major hurdle to my PhD (and I find out this week which parts I passed and which parts will need to be redone or revised). But, mostly, I am excited to focus in on my research and prepare my dissertation proposal. And I am also starting to see that grad school is a series of challenges punctuated by periods of less intensity rather than simply being a downward slope from prelims.

The final take-home message, I suppose, is that prelims weren’t really that bad. I spent a solid year dreading, looking forward to, fearing, preparing for, and anticipating my prelims. And now they’re done. And hopefully, I’ll have a bit more time to share my scientific ideas rather than confining my thoughts to jots in the margins of literature or scribbles on an index card.

Much of the work of being a scientist is wrapped up in research, seminars, committee meetings, and writing. But a big part of being a scientist is teaching the next generation, and there are lots of ways to do that. Right now, I’m a GSI (grad student instructor). In the past, I’ve led a junior high science club and was the president of my college bio club.

Due to the magic of the internet, there are now wonderful ways to help the next generation without making a large time commitment. Donors Choose is a great website that allows anyone to contribute financially to schools in need by giving money to specific projects teachers have posted. Any teacher can request money to buy books, equipment, or experiences for their students.

This month, a large fundraising push has been made within the blogosphere to raise money for Donors Choose in the form of a competition between blogs. I’ve already made a donation via Adventures in Ethics and Science. One of the perks of donating this month are the incentives being offered by various bloggers in exchange to donating toward their fundraising goal. Additionally, Seed is running a weekly raffle for donors.

In recognition of my donation, I’ve received two wonderful frog drawings from the offspring of Dr. Freeride, the voice of Adventures in Ethics and Science. I also won a coffee mug in the Seed raffle, so I’m doing pretty well! See the pictures below (click through for a larger version), and go donate yourself in order to receive a fabulous drawing (or any one of the other incentives offered by the science bloggers).

Elder offspring picture:

Younger offspring picture:

As found at Blog Around the Clock
An interesting animal I had: the coolest strange animal I’ve ever owned is probably my pet snake, Ferdinand. As president of biology club in college, my job was to take care of surplus budget at the end of the year. After my first year as president, we had a surplus of $130. This was just enough for a cute little king snake that was on sale. When I graduated, the bio club graciously passed my snake on to me. Right now, he’s still living in Seattle with my parents, but I hope to someday bring him out here to hang out with me.
An interesting animal I ate: I’ve never really eaten anything exotic. But here is a funny story about a somewhat mainstream foodtype. I lived on the coast of southern Oregon one summer, and I spent most of my time cooking for myself. One time, when my brother came to visit, we went out to eat at a seafood restaurant. Being the two adventurous kids we are, we decided to try some new seafood. We ordered lingcod (yum!), rockfish (fishy but good enough), shrimp, and oysters. The oysters came in the form of oyster soup. The broth was alright . . . and then we got to the oysters. Slimy, with weird black gunk in the middle. I think oysters are the most unappetizing thing I’ve ever eaten.

An interesting animal in the Museum:

The Auckland museum actually has real animals in it, and the little gecko on the left was one of the guys I saw when I was there.

I also have to agree with Coturnix that seeing a dodo skeleton/preserved specimen in the museum is absolutely amazing. I saw several moas in New Zealand, and they were just breathtaking. It makes me sad that there are animals that we humans have driven into extinction, but I am also grateful that we still have some specimen to observe.

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal

In undergrad, I worked in a biochem lab one summer. We assessed the influence of mercury on sturgeon livers, and we started a project to culture liver cells. I dissected several sturgeons. That’s pretty run-of-the-mill. The interesting thing was that the sturgeons had to be alive when I dissected them, which meant opening up an anesthetized fish to see a still-beating heart. That was a beautiful sight.

An interesting animal in its natural habitat

I absolutely love duck watching; in undergrad, I spent a lot of time sitting at the wetlands with a pair of binocs. I see lots of frogs in their natural habitat in the course of my work, and that’s always a fun spot. Oh, even better is spotting a salamander! I have to hunt for them under rocks or rotting logs, so it’s like a mini-scavenger hunt.

The best, though, comes from New Zealand again. While walking around Milford Sound at dusk, this little guy just wandered across my path. No, it’s not a kiwi; that would be truly awesome. I don’t remember the name, but it’s a much more common ground-dwelling bird. Still, I loved the lack of concern he showed as he meandered along the path in front of me.

A familiar state for the grad student is one of low burn. We rotate topics on and off the hottest part of the stove, and we always have something simmering in the back. Every once in awhile, as if we were preparing for Thanksgiving, every burner gets turned up in preparation for something big.

Right now, that’s my current state. This year, I’m undergoing prelims — the qualifying exams that determine whether or not I stay in the program. Obviously, I’m optimistic, but that does not mean I can be lackadaisical. For those of you reading, this means I might not have the most brilliant posts for the next month. My review and synthesis paper is due October 12th, I present a seminar on my current research findings on the 29th of October, and my prelim committee plumbs the depth of my knowledge on November 9th during an “informal chat with colleagues,” otherwise fondly know as the orals.

Sadly, that means I can’t tell you about all the really snazzy things I’d love to share. Included on the list of things I’d really like to share:

• how cool all the first year students are. I mean, seriously. I’m making some good friends here. Friday afternoons at 5, those that can make it congregate in the grad student lounge for snacks and an unwind time. It’s a good chance to know each other outside of classes, and I’ve learned a lot about how cool my new colleagues are.
• I’m a grad student mentor, which means I teach all the first time GSIs (Grad Student Instructors, or TAs) in biology how to teach. It’s quite fun. I’m learning a lot about new teaching techniques myself, and I get to guinea pig my students. It’s my third time teaching general biology, so I’ve got to do something exciting.
• Intra-guild predation is really awesome. I’d say more, but that’s all I’ve been reading/thinking/writing about for awhile now. It’s part of the topic of my prelim paper.
• how lovely the “Indian summer” is that we’re experiencing in Ann Arbor. It’s a warm autumn; how grand to watch the leaves turn and still be able to walk around in a t-shirt.

I’m sure there’s more, but I’ll leave it at this for now. I don’t want anything on the stove to burn.

Rhino, tickbird stuck in dead-end symbiotic relationship, from the Onion.

Enjoy!

I am often thoroughly impressed by my students and their abilities to engage in good dialogue. Perhaps it is the few classes that didn’t participate well . . . or maybe it’s the fact that so many people think students won’t bother to do readings and come prepared. But I seem to have gotten lucky this term, as my students thus far all appear to enjoy the classroom discussions we’ve had.

I’m teaching Bio 171 — the lecture for the ecology/evolution portion of the general biology sequence here at the University of Michigan. It’s a bit of a switch, as we just this year changed from having only one semester of general biology (with lab) to two semesters of lecture and a separate general biology lab course. Because of the new format, I’ve now got a discussion that solely focuses on lecture.

This week, we’re talking about global warming and our carbon footprint. My students read an article about the average carbon footprint of a Briton — biggest category? recreation! — and an interview with Dr. Lovelock, a proponent of nuclear power. I also had each student visit some carbon footprint calculation sites to determine their own footprint.

Once in class, we broke out into small groups. I fully expected to come back and have a large class discussion, but it never ended up happening. The groups were just going so well that I couldn’t break them up. I did visit a few groups to chat, and the students had great things to say. One group was grappling with the need to make life choices contrasted with the lack of desire to make said choices; specifically, two of the students talked about their summer commutes (1 mile walking for one student, and 25 minutes in stop and go traffic for the other). Neither of them would have changed their commute, and the conflict really showcased the debate many people must have about how to move themselves on a daily basis.

One thing students didn’t argue about at all is the need to make changes. As far as I could tell, everyone in class agreed that something is happening, and humans play at least some part in these changes. I completely agree on that front (in fact, there’s a great article about how global warming has a broad, far reaching impact that we don’t always see). This is heartening.

Interesting: being in hot tubs really does lower fertility in some men. Even more interesting is that the effect is reversed in 3-6 months of avoiding hot tubs.

I wonder how effective the heat treatment is in terms of birth control. That is to say, if the standard guy were to regularly use a hot tub, would it seriously impair his sperm production? Or is it just that avoiding hot tubs is good for men who already have fertility issues? I’m looking for a causal link here.

Greetings to all of you dropping by my newly published blog. I’ve cheated a wee bit and ported over lots of older science posts from my personal blog.

This blog is a new experiment for our department here at the University of Michigan. Sarah (of d(PhD)/dt) is currently the only other department blogger for now. Hopefully, we’ll get more folks on board once this picks up some steam.

From me, you should expect a few things. Foremost, there will be lots of photos. I like taking photos, and I am always happy to show them. Also, I do field work, so my photos are probably a bit more exciting than photos of Sarah’s computer (although I bet Sarah has some really awesome graphs she can share with people).

Second, I’ll be talking about science. That should be a given. And, last, I’ll be talking about grad school. Again, a given, based on the title of the blog, but I’ll state it here to reinforce the point. Part of my goal in blogging here is to show students a bit more about the life of a graduate student at the University of Michigan.

That said, welcome to the blog. Feel free to ask questions, read the archives, and subscribe to the RSS.

A student from this semester’s discussion just emailed me to give further thoughts on the discussion. Oh, wow. This has never really happened before.

I have a feeling that this will be a great semester, teaching wise. Hopefully, prelims will follow suit.

A well-written series of articles on the science of Harry Potter has been put up at pondering pikaia. I’ve rounded them all up here in case any are interested.

#1: Wizarding genetics
#2: Dracorex hogwartsia
#3: conservation biology
#4: the botany of wands
#5: kin selection
#6: the giant squid in the lake
#7: Horcruxes
#8: Scar Biology