Random Sample

Fashion trends I cannot endorse

2012-01-15T19:26:00.002-06:00

I work at a primarily undergraduate institution, which affords me great fashion ideas. There are, however, some trends I cannot understand.

I have been seeing low-volume ankle-height, flat, tan leather oxfords, people. And not ones with wing-tips or patterns. No. I am seeing shoes on 20 year olds that remind me precipitously of shoes I once sold, orthopedic shoes targeted at, shall we say, twilight women.

Shown below are the Frye shoes I've been seeing and, for comparison, the SAS - yes that's right, San Antonio Shoes - that I am familiar with. If you can't tell the difference I won't tell you.

No. Just, no.

(However if anyone wants to buy me these in 6.5, I would love you forever)

Oh this is just funny as hell.

2011-11-18T18:01:00.000-06:00

"Breastfeeding is a private, intimate moment between mother and baby. And dinner is a private, intimate moment between me and my cheeseburger."

Go read it. Humor + logic + feminism = QR has a happy

OMG the Fundies were right about something!

2011-05-16T17:50:00.003-05:00

May 21, 2011 is Judgement Day, apparently.

Which just so happens to be the day that my degree is officially conferred and I walk/get hooded. The world begins to end, when I get my Ph.D.

For myself and my classmates, it really is judgement day!

via

I pass! I pass! I pass! I don't fail!

2011-04-06T13:42:00.001-05:00

Yeah that's right. I defended my thesis yesterday. I kicked its ass. They were throwing tough questions at me right and left (ohai, I work on brain cancer and development, yeah throw those primary cilium basic biology questions my way), and I slammed 'em right into the outfield. There was laughing and joking during the exam. My corrections are very minimal; the department chair didn't even have any corrections for me. I should be able to finish them in less than a week, which means 3 weeks of vacation time for me! Booyah!

You can now call me Dr. Queenrandom. Oh yeah.

How you know you're a transfection guru

2011-02-12T11:45:00.001-06:00

I am here on a lonely Saturday making some (GFP-expressing) adenovirus so I can get revisions done in time for my committee to let me graduate so I can walk this year. I was worried because some of my transfections this week have been shit, but I did trash the reagent and get a new tube for this experiment. Behold my reward when I pelleted my cells:

That thar be some GFP.

Methinks this batch will have a very high titer.

Someone sure is confused, but it ain't who you think it is, KK

2011-01-31T16:19:00.001-06:00

Apparently Katherine Kersten's poor widdwe bwain is aww confused - she just can't undewstand that consensual sex and rape are different things.

Advice, honey: don't presume our young men are as confused as you are, that's insulting to men. These students knew exactly what they were saying, and prettymuch every adult other than you understands the difference between "yes" and "no." Hint: their definitions are in the dictionary.

Flattery will get you everywhere

2011-01-28T14:13:00.000-06:00

Our rotating student thought I was a postdoc ("because you're so knowledgeable!") :D

Which begs the question, "WHEN WILL THEY LET ME GRADUATE ALREADY?!"

BTW: Got a postdoc lined up. I'm very excited - the city is great, the area I'll live in is great (got that lined up too), the PI and I get along well (we're both grumpy old men, except I'm 30 and female...details), the project is something completely different that what I do, or what I thought I'd be doing, but it's very exciting. I am so ready to be done with this grad school bullshit. Hopefully my committee lets me set a date at my meeting next week.

Where I have been -or- Learning to love your reviewers

2010-11-08T16:24:00.003-06:00

So yeah. Submitted manuscript in late July. 1 day under 6 weeks later, we get reviewer comments (I think you can guess the review deadline for this journal). Good news: they didn't reject it and there are improvements to be made. Bad news: I immediately wanted to stab reviewer #2.

Reviewer #1 asked for, by far, the most time-consuming experiment (in addition to several other things that could be addressed entirely in writing). But, Reviewer #1 was very positive about the findings, the experiments and the impact. Even though s/he asked for the big guns, I was happy to address them because A) the reviewer likes my science and that's always a nice ego stroke and B) they are, logically, the next step of my project. It was an insightful review, and I appreciated both the comments and the professionality.

Reviewer #2 sounded like s/he just returned from a colonoscopy. Said some pretty unflattering things about the novelty of my work that, frankly, sounded as if they came from someone completely unfamiliar with the field. Asked for some nit-picky redos. Asked some questions that made me wonder if s/he even read the text or attended a science class, like, ever. Asked for a particular pet method that is less accurate than the one I used for a particular experiment (yeah, you bet we argued that one). Didn't like my controls and asked for ones that I personally think are less informative. So, of course, I immediately decided the person was an idiot. But now, in my wisened 2.5 months out from receiving the decision and having resubmitted earlier today, my attitude has changed slightly. I still disagree about the usefulness of the particular control, but I did it, and I am glad I did it. Because the experiment should have been straightforward, but it hit some kinks. These kinks were unrelated to the validity of my conclusions, however they did relate to the efficiency of my method. This forced me to re-evaluate a few early steps of my protocol and when I got the final readout, it was obvious that this new and improved method made my data much cleaner than they had been before, so I went back and redid all the experiments done on this particular protocol and got prettier results. So even if I don't think the particular control I performed to please the reviewer improved my paper in an appreciable way, the comment still did improve my paper immensely.

And about those questions I deemed dumb? When I sat down to answer them, it forced me to really, really think about my field as a whole. About the validity of using cancer cell lines and mouse models to study human cancers; I thought this had been pretty damn obvious since the cancer I study happens in the brains of toddlers. But being forced to put it down in writing in a way that both was supported by published evidence and not snarky made me a better scientist, if only in a small way. It challenged me to question my assumptions and to be able to defend what is generally unquestioned.

So now, looking back, even though I still think Reviewer #2 is a cranky jerk, I am now starting to think that rather than being stupid, s/he was stupid like a fox. In a way, at this point, I appreciate Reviewer #2 more than the nice Reviewer #1 (not that I am asking future reviewers to be mean to me!). While I need the enthusiasm of people like Reviewer #1 if I ever hope to be published, ultimately, the comments from Reviewer #2 improved my science more, both in the short term and the long term. That's really what it's all about, isn't it?

O PI Where Art Thou

2010-09-03T16:28:00.001-05:00

Trying to talk to my PI all day about exciting new data (last set of ChIP PCR finally worked! Figure complete! Hooray, lower annealing temp and Q Solution!) and hoping for advice on job search.

Always in a conversation with someone else.

Keep checking on office.

On phone.

Check again.

Left early for holiday weekend.

CRAP.

The big question: Will I still remember what I wanted to talk about on Tuesday?

Improving Your Scientific Communication: Presentations

2010-08-09T10:26:00.002-05:00

I believe firmly in the philosophy that one is an eternal student, always learning, and one should therefore always be open to improvement. This is particularly true of presenting your data to the scientific community. After all, your data may be awesome, but if it's presented shittily, it will be less well received, or maybe even looked over. Some of my student colleagues may disagree - they think that their presentations are "good enough" and the data will stand for itself. Bollux! I, for one, am not going to stand at a poster for 20 minutes trying to puzzle out which band is which and wonder what the hypothesis even is, if the poster is not clear. Furthermore, a good presentation will jump out and grab viewers by the gonads, exciting them in your work and further engaging them in your science. A poster that is boring or hard to follow won't get stopped at as much, and a presentation that is bland or overly complex won't elicit the types of engaging questions the presenter might want - after all, who wants to spend their 5 alloted minutes for questioning rehashing their presentation?

I also wonder how many scientists have any sort of formal training in oral or poster presentations. I am willing to bet the large majority does not, and instead relies on apprenticeship to gain presenting skills. This is great if your mentors are good presenters, but this is terrible if your mentors are horseshit presenters. I'd argue that even if your mentors were good presenters, there are still improvements that can be made. First, your mentor's style, while it can inform yours, can't be your style; you need to find your own voice, early and often. Second, I have noticed many faculty present in the style that was popular when they were in school or doing their postdocs, leading to an overwhelming amount of comic sans, complexly arrowed diagrams, too much text, and design that is incredibly red-green colorblindess unfriendly. Hell, I first learned to do my presentations in the late 90's-early 00's and am guilty of many of these mistakes. Relying on outdated methods/styles should be avoided at all costs, as it reflects complacency and a lack of refinement of personal skills.

In my quest for presentation skill knowledge, I recently came across two incredibly helpful blogs: Better Posters and PowerPoint Ninja, both of which have gads of presentation style pointers as well as technical advice. Aside from my #1 rule of thumb - never say in text what you can say with graphics* - there isn't really much more advice I can add to the subject than has been covered there, so my advice is to get your ass over to those blogs and play around for a few hours. They're pure awesomeness.

Discovered via Ambivalent Academic.

*Let's be real: NO ONE reads the text after the section/slide title. You can test this by inserting jokes into your poster figure legends (or, as a student colleague did, into the footnotes of your thesis - only her student reviewers noticed).

The horse says, doctorate denied!

2010-08-07T14:57:00.001-05:00

If you're contemplating grad school, or perhaps preparing for your thesis defense as I am, this episode of Futurama is obligatory viewing. (Note to self: do not show up to thesis defense sans clothes).

Getting Thesis Committes to Work for the Student: A Modest Proposal by a Student who's Been There and Back Again

2010-07-28T10:25:00.000-05:00

I have often said that I like to live my life in clusterfuck: the week I got married, I decided to adopt my first pet and buy my first car; in a 2 year period I started grad school, bought a house, and bought a business. You get the idea. But lately, I'm starting to think maybe I just live my life in coincidence. I have recently become part of a coalition of grad students at my institution fighting to get the school to take our career development seriously. It hasn't been an easy fight, but we also have our allies among the faculty. Our idea is to get some sort of centralized aid for students to learn about their options as scientists, to improve their scientific communications, to connect with potential employers/mentors, to learn what steps they can start taking to make themselves attractive for future grants, institutions, etc. Students weren't being asked to review papers or grants, or encouraged to network at meetings, or guided with how to get a PI position, and worse, they were well aware of the bottleneck in positions as one climbs the academic ladder. So, because a coalition of students doesn't necessarily have the power to force PIs to help their mentees with their careers, some students and myself have been working on an end run-around, to get our fellow students the development they need from the school if they can't get it from their mentors.

Now, one might say - and many have - that this is the job of the thesis mentor and, to a lesser extent, the committee members. Well the problem is, to be perfectly frank, the mentors just aren't cutting it, and committees don't care*.
Coincidentally, the same week I presented at a faculty meeting about this subject, there was a post on Drug Monkey discussing another job of mentors and committees gone awry: keeping the students' time to graduation appropriate. Now, there are a number of things students can do to minimize risk of a bad mentor, which I've covered before. The choice of committee members is almost as important as the choice in mentor. Assuming a 5-member committee structure where one member is the mentor, I would advise choosing at least one member who is more senior than your mentor, one member who is more junior, one who is an expert in what you are doing, and one who does something completely different. The caveat I'd add to the first, is that the member who is senior to your mentor is not going to take over and dictate your project (yes, I've seen this happen multiple times). I would also advise that it is even more important to have at least one committee member besides your mentor that you are comfortable going to in a time of crisis, personal or professional, and at least one member besides your mentor that is very active with and supportive of students. The former is because from what I have witnessed, a slight majority of students have some sort of crisis during the 4-6 years they are in grad school: abusive mentors, data being stolen/tampered with, divorce, a parent becoming critically ill, unexpected pregnancy - these are all things that have happened to my fellow students and friends during school. You need supportive committee members to help get you through tough times and to help you set reasonable goals for yourself during them. The latter committee member mentioned above - one that is active with students, such as a dean or director of education, or someone who is involved with multiple graduate courses - is because a person who is constantly in contact with students has a little better grip on the reality and needs of studentship than a faculty member who isn't as involved. Furthermore, they are more likely to be interested and engaged in your development as a scientist.

Unfortunately, in the end, all a student can do is minimize risk; students do not have the power to prevent bad behavior on the part of committees or mentors. There are, of course, routes of action to pursue if something does go wrong: committee members can be replaced, deans can be consulted, HR can even be employed. Of course, none of these routes are without politics or drama, but sometimes rocking the boat is necessary for one's sanity. Trust me, I've been there.

To widen this discourse, however, I'd like to talk about what can be done to prevent mentors from abusing their students and committees from shirking their duties. And I've borrowed a concept from every other employer in the world: OVERSIGHT. At all of the institutions I've worked for/been a student at, there is little to no oversight in the mentorship aspect of a faculty member; annual reviews are largely based on grantsmanship and publications, with a little bit of teaching thrown in for posterity. But there is little accountability for mentorship. I propose that the eligibility of faculty members for acquiring students should be partially based on continued evaluation of their mentorship and stewardship on committees. These evaluations should be done by the education arm of the graduate program, rather than through their department head, where their usual annual review originates, and faculty mentors should be required to do an annual self-evaluation of mentorship as well. While feedback/exit interviews from all lab members should be taken into account, it is also important to protect trainees from any sort of reprisal that might occur if a faculty member ferrets out who said what. As you can see, I'm not entirely sure of the logistics, however I think making faculty members accountable for the quality of their mentorship/committee membership in a tangible way - that is, ability to recruit students - will both encourage faculty to improve themselves and perhaps discourage those faculty who might naturally abuse students from taking on mentees. The old system of rumors of who is good and who isn't, leaving students to traverse the murky waters themselves and figure out the old boys networks while doing good science is archaic and gives the faculty too much power relative to trainees; it's got to go, and I think centralized, fact-not-rumor-based evaluation and accountability is the way to go.

*At least, this is what I am hearing from my student colleagues; my interest in this subject piqued because my mentor was doing a good job in this department, and conversations with my fellow students revealed that they weren't getting the kind of development I was.

Attention!

2010-07-16T11:52:00.000-05:00

QR is in manuscript writing hell! Including delays caused by: a computer virus, my mentor moving, jury duty, and weddings!

Hoping for a return to normalcy soon. So I can do super fun things like try to find a job and write a thesis chapter by the end of the month.

You wish you were me. Admit it.

Yes!

2010-07-09T10:39:00.000-05:00

Although the ruling has its limitations, we're one step closer.

Meanwhile, I'm proud to say I've learned my own state representative has introduced a bill to remove gender-specificity from state marriage laws.

Today's a good day!

The Queen Random Cancer Institute

2010-06-25T22:38:00.004-05:00

If I were Queen of the Universe and not just Queen of my house, I would create the ultimate cancer institute, hereby dubbed the Queen Random Cancer Institute (QRCI). The QRCI's mission would focus broadly on cancer research (basic, translational and clinical - maybe a little more basic because it is dear to my heart) with an emphasis on training and education, and would be located, hmm, just outside a major city so there's somewhere fun to go, clinics and institutions for collaborations, but housing costs don't bleed trainees dry. Maybe outside Seattle? I do love Seattle. The QRCI would be well funded (I think maybe suddenly becoming the richest person on the planet so I can fund this cool place) and would feature the following scientific resources:

Core facilities: DNA synthesis, Microscopy (and I'd hire people whose only job is making sure the confocals are CLEAN), Spectrometry, Mouse Husbandry and Genetics, Flow Cytommetry, Tissue Processing, Model Organisms (pick your favorite - we'll have a core!) I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting at the moment.
PIs, trainees and students would have free access to and be encouraged to use consultants for grant writing, manuscript writing, scientific librarians and statistical analysis.
Collaboration would be encouraged across basic, translational and clinical research through interdepartmental funding initiatives, in-house conferences and interdepartmental seminars.
A tissue bank of patient samples, obtained with express consent.

Not forgetting the most important resource in research - the people! - the QRCI would have the following employee benefits:

Employees would enjoy free lunches at the cafeteria - and they'd be GOOD. Healthy options would not be limited to salad.
Free on-site gym for employees.
Grad student stipends and benefits would be fully paid for by the institution, and would be set at NIH+25%.
Students would get the same benefits as employees.
50% of postdoc stipends and benefits would be paid for by the institution and would be set at NIH+25%.
Career development training would be available and encouraged throughout the scientific career from just out of undergrad tech to established PI, including scientific skills, help identifying how to obtain jobs and career goals, leadership, lab management, and scientific communication.
Comprehensive health care including vision and dental.
6 months paid parental leave for the birth or adoption of a child.
On-site subsidized daycare for ALL employees, trainees and students including private nursing suites.
Help for spouses of employees/trainees/students to find jobs.
Help for employees/trainees/students to find housing if they have to relocate to join the QRCI.

Finally, the QRCI would also be focused on outreach:

Realistically prorated healthcare for clinic patients including free clinics.
Employees, trainees and students will be expected to volunteer in the community for a minimum 2 weeks a year (this can be spread out for a total of 80 hours/year). Their normal salary/stipend will persist during this 2 weeks, with an option to volunteer more for a total of 120 hours of salary for volunteering. The institute will help arrange volunteer opportunities with the local community.
Public education - I'm not sure how to go about this, but I'd like a public education campaign focused on promoting science education for all ages with a focus on life sciences and cancer treatment.

This post is a part of Scientiae's July installation: Fantasy Institute.

Bisexuality and Heterosexual Privilege

2010-06-20T16:18:00.004-05:00

Happy Pride Month! For once I remember an awareness day/week/month ON TIME! Wooohoo! Yeah I realize I totally missed SAAM this year :/ I'll try to make up for that somehow.

But anyway! Back on topic! Today, folks, we're going to talk about the intersection of biinvisibility and heterosexual privilege* You see, sometimes bisexuals pose a weirdness to LG safe spaces, because some of us - many of us - are in dual-sex relationships and appear to the world at large as heterosexual. We are told that in order to participate, we have to acknowledge our straight privilege. I think with bisexual activism in the 00's this has gotten much better, and we have been much more accepted in the LGBT community, but I still hear it from time to time and every time I feel like I have no place to call home.

It's true; as a bisexual woman in a dual-sex relationship, I tacitly and explicitly receive the benefits of much of straight privilege. I could marry the person I loved (er, still love, not like that part is in the past), giving me a huge amount of legal privilege. Because most people assume I am straight, I don't have to face the daily challenges to my sanity that a person in a same-sex relationship faces. I get it: I understand how when I am bestowed, and/or take advantage of (depending on the situation), straight privilege, I appear as not capable of contributing to safe spaces because I am benefitting from a system that oppresses homosexuals.

But it isn't as simple as receiving and taking advantage of heterosexual privilege: "We don't have to take it, we're given it by default, and we can't give it up -- at least, not all of it." When I benefit from heterosexual privilege, I am also benefiting from a system that is oppressive to bisexuals, a system that is ultimately oppressive to myself. In order to receive most of the benefits of heterosexual privilege, we have to be closeted. In fact, I can't count the number of times that my sexuality has been brushed off because I am in a dual-sex relationship: even when I speak up, even when I make my sexuality blatantly apparent, I am shoved back into the closet without my assent (although usually not without a few perfunctory offensive questions about the nature of my relationship first, of course). So many people who I've told of my bisexuality manage to deal with it by shoving it aside and pretending I'm straight, because it is easier for them to do so than to deal with their own biphobia and homophobia, because if a bisexual person is in a dual-sex relationship, we're seen as passing for straight**.

This is because of homophobia and biinvisibility: when someone sees a man and a woman in a relationship, it is automatically assumed that both parties are straight, and they are treated as such; conversely, when someone sees two people of the same sex in a relationship, both parties are assumed to be homosexual. Either way as a bisexual person in a relationship, we're shoved into a box that doesn't fit us, whether we protest or not (and some of us just get tired of protesting, since it doesn't really change the outcome anyway). This is the definition of biinvisibility: no matter what (or who) we're doing, we're assumed*** to be someone who we're not; our true sexuality is erased and made invisible. For bisexuals in a dual-sex relationship, straight privilege is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, if we are currently in a dual-sex relationship we receive the benefits of straight privilege, but on the other hand we're closeted without our assent. And that privilege is out the door the second we're in a same-sex relationship. Further, no mater what kind of relationship we're in, same-sex or dual-sex, we are hit with biphobic attacks and biinvisibility from all sides. This is why it isn't fair to talk about bisexuality in terms of straight privilege: because it is so fucking much more complex than that, and reducing the multifaceted system of oppression that bisexuals live to heterosexuality erases our existence and experience.

I believe this speaks for the need for continued bisexual activism and a formation of a robust bisexual community of its own, with its own safe spaces. I am truly grateful for allies in the LGBT community and the visibility the LGBT has lent to bisexual oppression, but honey, we bisexuals have to continue to step up and make our voices heard, because only bisexuals can really understand and make visible our unique set of oppressions.

*I seriously need to learn that it's spelled "privilege" not "priviledge". I always want to spell it how my midwestern accent pronounces it.

**Some bisexuals enjoy and take advantage of passing, but I see that as a further sign of the effect of biphobia on the lives and happiness of bisexuals: in order to be left alone and be happy, we have to play the part of straight, even if it doesn't fit us. If that's how a bisexual person makes it through this world sane, if that's how s/he survives biphobia and homophobia, I can't get too mad at him/her (after all, it is internalized homophobia and biphobia that creates this internal conflict). I get mad at the system of heterosexual rule that forces us into that sort of a decision in the first place.

***Remember folks, when you assume, you make an ass of yourself.

Exhaling

2010-06-04T15:06:00.001-05:00

I just got the official committee OK to go ahead and start writing my dissertation.

WOOOOOOOOO! I WILL GRADUATE BEFORE I TURN 30!

Now to find a postdoc.....

Bronte-Saurus! RAWR

2010-05-30T10:39:00.002-05:00

This prettymuch made my week.

Via

Ways to set off my bullshit meter in less than 5 seconds

2010-05-14T16:46:00.002-05:00

Sending me, a student, an email addressed to Dr. Queenrandom with the opening phrase "Due to your stature in the oncology field...."

Permanent Spousal Record: Recent Conversations

2010-05-13T18:36:00.003-05:00

The Inexplicable
LB: "I should have figured you'd be into kyaking; lesbians love kyaking."*

The Dastardly
Setting: QR is diligently, distractedly writing a manuscript on the couch whilst LB watches a hockey game.
LB: "Can I have your Cookie Dough Ice Cream in the freezer?"
QR: "Yeah sure whatever....." commence 10 second pause while I tippity-type away... "Wait...What? NO!"
LB: "Too late! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

We Love Each Other, I Swear
In response to me sending him this ecard:

He sent me this one:

Would that it were not so true.

*Said completely without a sense of irony. I'm glad my husband is comfortable enough with my sexuality to make seminonsensical jokes about it.

Spring Cleaning

2010-05-10T22:15:00.007-05:00

I thought I would be much less busy when I got back from a week long conference.*

I thought horribly wrong.

I am now Filled! With! Ideas! in addition to having to finish up long-planned experiments and write my manuscript. Oh and put together a journal club presentation, help plan and implement a career development series for the fellow's association, spend a day escorting around an invited speaker, and other various seminars. April has been a bitch and May doesn't look much better. I might not get any relief until my ~~fucking~~ cherished civil service of jury duty in July (apparently "I'm writing a goddamn dissertation and trying to find a job you fuckwits" is not a valid excuse for getting out of jury duty).

I'm also trying to fill out all the forms to transfer labs - my mentor is changing institutions and the plan is for me to go to a similar lab here to finish up the last few months of my training - and making sure supplies & such are in order for me to do so without too much disruption to my research.

To give you an idea of how busy I am, witness the current shameful, shameful state of my lab desk, which is the worst it has been....ever in my life:

The computer area with recyclables which I have no time to walk all the way across the building to the lunchroom to recycle, pens, lip gloss, paper napkins, schedules, and pathway idea sketches.

Papers, books, journals to read in addition to data sheets and forms to fill/file.

Miscellaneous, including lunch, conference materials, old copies of Science that haven't been filed, and a computer that hasn't worked properly in the better part of a year.

Those recyclables, again, because the utter mess needs to be fully appreciated (gold star goes to the person who first correctly enumerates the empty vessels).

I keep intending to clean my desk, but somehow other things keep taking precedence. At any rate, it will have to be cleaned out in a month when I move to my new digs in a super new building.

In less depressing and more getting-things-doneidness news, I started this year's garden, which will expand upon last year's timid experimental foray into gardening by quite a bit. This first required clearing a 9-foot patch of weed-encrusted planter as well as maintenance weeding of the puny 3 foot patch I cleared last year. This involved removing several oak saplings -seriously, who the hell puts oak saplings between a house and a sidewalk? This past weekend I bought several little starter herb plants & transferred them to the planter. The thyme plant stayed - I espied it green popping out of the snow during our thaw, and it's going well. I had to replant a basil bush. In addition, I added chives, rosemary, marjoram and mint for LB. They're doing much better post-transplant than last year's batch. Next week at the farmer's market I'll pick up oregano, which I forgot last week. I have a lot more room, too, but I don't know what I'll get. I want italian peppers and chilli peppers. What else is easy to grow and doesn't attract rabbits?

*For inquiring minds, the talk went pretty well - I looked fabulous of course, and my nerves didn't show too badly. I also seemed to impress my session chair, who is a former Editor-in-Chief for the journal in which I want to publish. Fuck yeah.

Nerves

2010-04-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

Queenrandom is leaving for her VBICM shortly and is pretty nervous about her talk, although the nice doctor gave her some shiny drugs that calm her nerves and cause her to write in the third person. The conference is rather long so she doubts she can get any substantive posts written in the next week or so, after which regular Random Sample programming will resume.

Think happy good presentation thoughts for me!

O Western Blot: an ode to the tune of O Tannenbaum

2010-04-07T11:20:00.006-05:00