molecular biology.

hmm. sometimes it's my friend and sometimes it's not. well. i love love love learning about all this stuff... DNA, RNA, transcription, translation, regulation... it's all so fascinating to me. but i hate hate hate being tested on it.

i'm a bad test taker.

i have awful test anxiety. i always have. i remember in 4th grade i used to get sick over tests. but now. in college. it's really bad. i don't know what my deal is. i stress out too much about my grades. i feel like i HAVE to get an A or else it's the end of the world. one of my professors told me that grades really are not a good measure of how smart you are, but still i can't help it. i love getting As.

if you can't tell, my test today wasn't the best test i've ever taken. i reinvented a few of the eukaryotic translational mechanisms. blah.

well now i have to finish up my grant proposal. it's due sunday. i have it almost done, i'm just waiting for my professor to get back to me about my proposal draft. just because i think alyssa might be interested... i'll give a little explanation of my project. i'm going to look at various species of bark beetles... isolate gDNA and cDNA, analyze/compare the gene sequences from each species, examine molecular divergence relative to phylogeny, and transfer the genes into baculoviral expression vectors for functional assays. ok. so basically i'm going to try to identify a molecular target in these beetles that could be "knocked out" so they can't damage timber and kill the forests anymore. woo hoo. science saves the world. :]

ok. i'm going to go scrapbook now. :] yay for friday after a long, hard, yucky week.