Erin Wissink

Real women and curves

2010-04-27T22:54:00.002-04:00

Do any of these lines sound familiar?

"Real women have curves."

"Men like a woman with meat on her bones."

"No one wants to date a woman who is stick thin."

These statements are supposed to be empowering to women. Down with unrealistic body images!

Well guess what, world. I'm a real woman. I don't have curves. I can even see some ribs.

I guess statements like, "Some women have curves while others don't," don't make for good slogans.

So here's my slogan. I am woman. I am skinny. Hear me roar.

Moving downtown

2010-01-10T00:22:00.002-05:00

The Great Apartment Hunt has begun. I live about 4 miles from my favorite part of campus, and around here, that pretty much equals the boonies. There's a sad excuse for a mall nearby, as well as a Friendly's and an Applebee's. OMG, how not exciting!

The plan is to move near downtown and campus. Then I'll be able to walk to school, friends' apartments, shops, and bars. I found a wonderful apartment that will hopefully be mine.

There are things I'll miss about the boonies though. I'll miss seeing every star in the sky on clear nights. As much as I complain about the deer overpopulation, I'll miss having adolescent deer standing in front of my window, searching for apples in the snow. I'll miss seeing a deer eat an apple.

And I'll miss having easy access to Target, purveyor of all things necessary for life.

Sometimes snow is less than fun

2009-12-23T00:26:00.002-05:00

This year for Christmas, I asked Geico for a new car door, and they said I could have one! I know that car doors aren't normal gift requests, but it's not often that car doors have gaping holes in them. Like mine does.

Zoom back in time to Friday. Friday was supposed to be a beautiful, glorious day. After talking about proteins and duckweed for five minutes, I would be done with Semester 1 of graduate school. There would be a celebratory lunch, then a drive to DC so that I could spend time with M in a wonderful city.

These plans did not include an epic snow storm occurring in Maryland and Virginia.

Side note: People warned me that driving in Pennsylvania could be dangerous. I might get stranded. I might end up living my life in Scranton, trying to sell bananas or something. All because Pennsylvania isn't known for their plowing prowess.

Pennsylvania had beautiful clear roads. Then I reached Maryland, land of non-cleared roads. And not salted roads.

I don't particularly like Maryland. Baltimore in specific. The last time that I drove through Baltimore, I went to McDonald's and told off an unattractive, aging, beer-bellied man for teaching teenagers about beer goggles. I already am biased, and the negative bias grows!

So there I am, on the outskirts of Baltimore, my not-favorite city that features not-salted roads. The snow begins to fall. I'm a Northerner now, so I declared that I don't fear snow.

What anyone should fear, though, is other people driving on snow. Especially ones with 4-wheel drive who develop megalomania and think their cars can handle anything. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

And so, I was driving on snow. My lane was fairly clear due to big trucks who had driven in it before me. The exit lane, however, had beautiful virginal snow on it. I got into the exit lane, and then I saw a Jeep facing me. Facing me on freaking I-695. That's not supposed to happen. The guy had lost control and spun out his car.

I hit my brakes and immediately realized that snow was going to prevent me from stopping in time. I then turned my wheel as hard as I could, heard the lovely scraping-plastic-on-metal sound, and came to a slow stop. My car is made of plastic, and much of the plastic on my passenger car door was missing.

My door was the bad news. The good news was that the other car was fine, my car ran, I wasn't injured, and my cat was not traumatized. (Did I mention the cat in the back seat?) It was still crazy dangerous outside, so we exchanged info and went on our merry ways.

And now I get a car door for Christmas.

In which I show I am highly biased towards science

2009-12-14T00:34:00.003-05:00

Today I went to a coffee shop to study for my upcoming exam. The coffee shop is known for being run by a commune (or possibly a cult...), and interesting people gather there. I sat at the back of the shop, hoping that anyone who was there to chat and relax would sit near the fireplace and the windows. Sigh, no such luck.

I learned that one man is writing a book. We didn't converse at all, he just spoke to three other people about this book, and I really couldn't avoid eavesdropping. I wondered if he spent as much time writing as he spent talking about writing. Anyways, as I heard over and over, his book is about how he moved to a far away city to find himself, and while there, he came to the conclusion that our culture is too isolated, we should all live in communities or with our extended families, and that everyone should do experiments in order to find themselves. I found it hard to take him too seriously when I heard that he lives over five hours from his nuclear family, so he must still be pretty isolated, even after finding his true self and understanding the failings of our culture.

And here's where my science-y biases come in. I kept thinking that in the time it took him to move across the country and learn about himself, he could have been contributing to society by expanding the bounds of human knowledge. I already know about self-discovery because I've read Into the Wild and The Motorcycle Diaries. I felt his time could have been better spent preparing for a career in science or engineering, or in writing something truly novel. It didn't help that I was reading scientific papers that explained mechanisms of aging and cancer while listening to him.

And then I started thinking about how amazing science is. This man did personal experiment to learn truths about himself and our culture. The experiments I read about, though, described experiments that exposed deeper truths that don't just apply to humans but also apply to yeast, a single-celled organism. Want to feel connected to all of Creation? Then consider this. Everyone, from humans down to E. coli, use closely related proteins and pathways to make new DNA, repair that DNA when it's damaged, and turn that DNA into proteins that dictate our entire lives. I already know that culture is getting increasingly isolated and fragmented. Without that isolation, though, I wouldn't be at my current school preparing to further stretch our collective knowledge of life and how it works.

2009-12-06T19:35:00.002-05:00

What a stressful week. The tension in my shoulders was a constant, physical reminder of the week's emotions. Sadness at once again leaving my my loved ones in pursuit of an education. Frustration with being sick. Worry that nothing in lab will ever work for me again, leaving me with no meaningful data from the past two month. Sheer busyness from writing a 20 page paper with four other people. It was a long week.

And then the wonderful feeling of the tension melting away, like the snow melting outside, while singing and dancing to "Hey Yeah" with dozens of other people in an ill-lit bar.

It's a work hard, play hard existence here. I'm glad I found time to play yesterday.

Writing update

2009-12-06T18:43:00.002-05:00

Not too surprisingly, I lost NaNoWriMo. The goal was 50,000 words in the month of November, and I wrote 16,325. While I officially lost, I'm still happy with my effort. It's been a long time since I felt like I had a story inside me that I wanted to share with the world. The book is far from done, but it has been started.

Last February, I tried to write a novel about sailors and pirates. The main character, Amelia, grew up living the good life, but her father lost all their money, and the family ended up living in the slums of England. The father would do anything to try to make money, including pimping out his teenage daughter. Amelia ran away from home and joined a merchant ship while dressed as a boy. And then the story ended. I wanted it to be historically accurate, or at least more accurate than Pirates of the Caribbean, so I couldn't focus on the story at all. I was too busy asking, How many people live on a ship? How often do they sleep? What jobs could I give my novice sailor to do? How would Amelia hide the fact that she was a woman while on a very small ship?

I love pirates, and I hope to someday finish that story. Pirates provide a good vehicle (vessel?) for questioning identity and fighting against social norms. For now, though, I think I'll stick to my story that takes place in a coffee shop and explores the life of 20-something year olds.

My other writing plan is to write about my true love, SCIENCE. More precisely, I want to write about the people who did really cool science. In school, we learned lots of scientific facts but almost nothing about the art of discovery and the people making those discoveries. I think people are fascinating, plus I want to learn from those scientists who discovered amazing things. In that vein, I plan to look up information about Nobel Prize winners and share how they made their awesome discoveries. We'll see how that goes.

What I do in lab

2009-11-11T12:45:00.005-05:00

Some people have asked what exactly it is that I do during those hours I spend in lab. For that reason, I now give you an introduction to DNA methylation.

As you may know, DNA is made of up four bases: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). In the double helix, A always binds with T, and G always binds with C. After DNA is transcribed to form RNA, sets of these three bases are called a codon. Each codon codes for one of 20 amino acids. When the amino acids are linked together, you get a protein.

Not all DNA forms protein though. Within one gene, there are different regions, and only the exons actually code for proteins. A normal gene has an enhancer, a promoter, two untranslated regions, exons, and introns. The enhancer can be thousands of bases away from the actual gene, yet from that distance it can determine if the gene is regulates is turned on or off. The promoter is directly upstream where RNA transcription begins. In order to turn on a gene, the promoter must recruit RNA Polymerase II and other proteins used in

(image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA,
created by Madeleine Price Ball)

transcription. The two untranslated regions are transcribed into RNA but they don't become protein. Instead, they help the mRNA move from the nucleus into the cytosol, and they are also involved in regulating the translation of the gene. Exons code for proteins, and they are interrupted by introns which are removed before the mRNA leaves the nucleus.

When a C is next to a G in the DNA sequence, the C can be methylated, meaning a -CH3 is attached to it. If the methylation mark is found in the enhancer or the promoter, it often means that the gene should not be turned on. It's stable, meaning that as the DNA replicates and the cell divides, the methylation mark remains in place.

My current lab studies these methylation marks, and so I do too. We detect them by treating our DNA with sodium bisulfite. Bisulfite has the power to turn C's into uracils (U, found in RNA), but it can't convert a C that is methylated. After the bisulfite treatment, it's possible to tell if any C was methylated because it will only still be C if it had a methyl group attached.

I'm working on extracting DNA from different types of cells and doing this bisulfite treatment. I'll eventually be able to use mass spectrometry to tell whether or not I have methylation in these different cells, and that's pretty exciting.

In addition to food, I also love sleep

2009-11-10T23:20:00.002-05:00

As an undergrad, I probably averaged 5.5 hours a sleep a night during the week and totally shot my sleep schedule to hell during paper writing season. When I hit Year 5 though, I'd had enough. I discovered that sleeping 7 hours a night felt amazing and as a bonus my coworkers stopped telling me I looked tired on a daily basis. Sleep apparently made me more attractive. Win!

Now I'm back in school, and the deal with grad school is that I could totally find work to fill every hour of every day. There are papers to read, notes to review, experiments to think about, exams to take. I could actually do all the required reading on time, deeply understand the papers I'm assigned for my discussion paper, become an expert in my field, and apply for every fellowship imaginable.

Just because it's possible to fill every moment with school doesn't mean it's advisable. I don't stress as easily when I sleep, which makes me happier. Grad school takes five years, and I'm determined to be a happy, less stressed, and get enough sleep.

On that note, it's time for bed.

My never-ending love of food

2009-11-08T20:40:00.003-05:00

At the moment, my only roommate is my cat Sapphire. He's a pretty good roommate, considering he can't feed himself or clean his bathroom. He's excellent at purring and making me feel loved when I get home from school.

Sometimes, though, I wish I had a roommate who was capable of cooking me dinner and running some needed errands. Last week was pretty overwhelming with my last-minute decision to apply for the NSF, and then I ran out of time to buy food or even cook food. I survived off of less than stellar campus food for lunch and fast food for dinner. It wasn't particularly healthy, tasty, or cheap.

This week, however, will be better. I'll even eat vegetables, which I hear are good for you. If I can find arborio rice in this town, there will be risotto just to make up for the McDonald's I ate last week.

Nom nom nom!

NaNoWriMo derailed

2009-11-05T17:01:00.004-05:00

It's only Day 5 of NaNoWriMo, and I'm already completely derailed. The derailing happened on Day 2, around 12:30 pm. At that moment, I decided I needed to apply for the NSF fellowship. I would be filled with self-loathing if I didn't at least turn in an application. That applications is, of course, due tomorrow.

I have been writing this week, which is half of the point of NaNoWriMo. I've just been writing about how I'm an amazing person and my plan for great research.

I will return to my novel tomorrow! I miss you already, novel of mine!

NaNoWriMo

2009-11-01T14:55:00.003-05:00

I got an email today from NaNoWriMo that was full of good advice for new writers. Things like it's okay to have no clue what I'm doing. Do not edit while writing. Write a shitty first draft and then edit it to my heart's content, but only after I have an entire first draft. And lastly, tell everyone I know that I'm writing a novel.

So here goes. I'm writing a novel. At the end of November, I should have written 50,000 words of a book. My personal goal is to write at least 2000 words a day. We'll see what happens!

Roasted chicken

2009-10-27T08:50:00.002-04:00

I made a roasted chicken on Sunday. The entire 3 pound chicken cost under $6, and I'll be enjoying my chicken goodness for a few more meals. My future includes chicken pot pie and maybe even chicken & dumplings. Yum!

When I roast a chicken, I get very intimate with it. I like to melt butter, add spices to it (this time I used sage, marjoram, thyme, and rosemary), then coat my fingers with butter/spice mix, and rub it under the chicken's skin to add more flavor. I also brushed it on the skin and dumped the rest of the mix into the chicken cavity (after removing giblets because giblets=ew). Then I cooked at 350F for almost two hours. Delicious!

I saved the carcass in case I want to make stock. My last stock-making experience didn't work out though. Any stock-making advice?

I was informed by friends that talking about the carcass in my refrigerator made me sound like a serial killer. I swear, I only store chicken carcasses! Really!

I also made bread pudding, but I fear my bread:pudding ratio was off. Maybe next time will turn out better.

Poor neglected blog

2009-10-08T18:43:00.003-04:00

Today I went to class, took my first exam of the semester, collected the remaining shreds of my dignity, and went to my second class. Those shreds of dignity that I still had after the exam? They're gone now. I left them in Warren Hall this morning.

Some people are phobic about blood, graphic descriptions of medieval surgery, or large flying insects. Not me. I can handle all of those things just fine.

What gets me is eyes. Eyes are freaky. They're squishy and connect to the brain and talking about them is just gross. I could never wear contacts because, ew, I'd have to touch my eye to do so. I will wear the clunkiest Coke bottle glasses before wearing contacts.

So yeah, eye phobia. I have it. What did we talk about today? Retinablastoma, aka TUMORS IN THE EYE. The professor kept talking about these tumors and showed graphic, horrifying pictures, and I proceeded to flip the fuck out. I was shuddering, covering my eyes, and trying to fold myself into a fetal position at my tiny, tiny desk. And my classmate was laughing at me, course. I can't blame her because I was being totally ridiculous.

To add to my embarrassment, I sit in the front of the room. I'm in the Female Grad Student row. We're fairly well known now in the department. We all party with our TAs and talk to our professor outside class. My freak out was noted.

To date, I have spilled my tea everywhere, caused a potential lab hazard by attacking someone with hugs, and had an epic freak out, all in front of my departmental faculty. Excellent.

Books and Cooking

2009-08-24T10:12:00.001-04:00

I recently read a book of short stories by Richard Russo called “The Whore’s Child." I’ve also read his books Empire Falls and Straight Man. All of his stories are about people who realize they’ve gotten trapped in lives they never wanted. Many of his protagonists decided to settle on something at one point, with every intent of fixing life later, but instead they stay in a non-fulfilling existence. His stories are scary because it’s easy to see how easy it is to lose control of your life. His novels are a bit cheerier because they’re longer, and his characters get a chance to change and create a new life.

Yesterday I read all of Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia and like Russo’s characters, Julie realizes she’s stuck in a life she doesn’t want. She hates her job and will probably never become an actress even though that why she lives in New York.. Plus she has a ticking maternal clock and a syndrome that makes it difficult for her to get pregnant.

So she turns to cooking. With support from her husband, brother, and friends, she cooks every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume One within the next year MtAoFC has 524 recipes. That’s a lot of cooking.

All that cooking was a true challenge. She probably used 200 pounds of butter while cooking organs, boning a duck, and vivisecting a lobster. There were many tears as aspics refused to gel and bone marrow did not easily leave the bone. Yet she seemed happier at the end. Even if she didn’t enjoy her secretary job, every night she what home and worked on a personal goal, one whose rewards included a full stomach and happy bystanders.

This book made me want to try new foods. For the first time in my life I felt a craving for liver and bone marrow. Seven considered asparagus. Maybe I’ll find myself a copy of MtAoFC and cook some new foods. I should be able find a reputable butcher in Ithaca My fellow students can either be entranced or repulsed my food adventurism.

Applying to Grad School: Preparation

2009-08-22T12:54:00.001-04:00

Major parts of-the grad school application include recommendation letters, transcripts, and the personal statement. These are things you need to start working on early. I started my sophomore year.

For my transcript, I took classes in genetics, biochemistry, and cell biology. I got good grades in all my classes, so I had a 3.9 GPA when I filled out my applications. Good grades are very helpful.

Most schools require three recommendation letters. I had worked in two labs, so my two PIs wrote me letters, as did one of my genetics professors who had taught me a lot. Had I not spent much of my undergrad life in those labs, my application would have been much weaker.

For one thing, I had tried out different kinds of labs. I enjoyed the quantitative genetics lab that I had begun in, and I learned many essential skills there. It was in my second lab, though, that I found I truly loved molecular biology and gene expression.

For another, I had been in my second lab for over a year when P began my applications. My PI knew me very well, thought I did good work, and wanted me to get into an excellent program.

Working in one lab for a long time means you can do in-depth work on your project, impress your boss (hopefully!), and get a good idea for the research you want to do once you reach grad school. Between my project and all the literature reading I did, I knew I wanted to investigate gene regulation, transcription, epigenetics, and cell development

The personal statement asks what research you want to do. I had an answer.

As soon as you realize you might want to go to grad school, get research experience in your field. In the process, you’ll find out if you like research (which you hopefully will if you’re serious about grad school) and your application process will be so much easier.

Working in one lab for a long time means you can do in-depth work on your project, impress your boss (hopefully!), and get a good idea for the research you want to do once you reach grad school. Between my project and all the literature reading I did, I knew I wanted to investigate gene regulation, transcription, epigenetics, and cell development

The personal statement asks what research you want to do. I had an answer.

As soon as you realize you might want to go to grad school, get research experience in your field. In the process, you’ll find out if you like research (which you hopefully will if you’re serious about grad school) and your application process will be so much easier.

Writing

2009-08-21T10:57:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine, Tyler, wrote me a letter, and he asked me what kind of writing I'm interested in. I thought I'd save my answer for posterity by posting it here.

I think a lot of articles written about genetics for the popular press are short-sighted. They mostly focus on how x gene gives you y disease, when really genes can be regulated, and environmental effects can mediate how x gene works in the body. I'd like to to write about how nuture and nature effect each other.

I'm also supposedly writing a novel, but I've had trouble motivating myself. I have a story in my head, though, so I should work harder at getting it on paper.

I need to write more because like all things, it requires practice to be good at. I need to finish my novel and also try out writing about science in a way that makes sense to non-scientists. I think I could be a good writer if I pushed myself to try harder.

In the past 16 hours, I've heard from Tyler who is also trying to write. I read Michael's post about writing more. I'm joining the herd. I also pledge to write regularly. I'm kicking myself for not spending more of my lazy summer with pen and journal in hand, getting this story about pirates and self-discovery out of my head and into the world. That's going to change though. I too will keep writing, even if I'm busy with other things. What's the point of having a story if it can't get out to the real world?

Roadtrippin'

2009-08-21T09:46:00.002-04:00

I drove back to Ithaca yesterday with my cat Sapphire. That's right, twelve hours of me and my cat. He spent the first hour telling me about how his life is terribly unfair through yowls. When I told him that we were only 8 miles from Virginia and that he'd never been to Virginia before, his face clearly stated, "Bitch, please. I never wanted to go to Virginia, and I hope you choke." And then he slept for 11 hours.

Signs that inform me of road work are capable of inducing tears in me, especially since North Carolina doesn't seem to care about its roads, yet I have to sit in stop-and-go traffic for a half hour so that Virginians can have nice roads. At that point, I hope that the state of Virginia would choke.

I prefer driving through small states. Logically, I know that 200 miles is 200 miles, no matter how many states I cross. Yet Virginia and Pennsylvania are morale-killing places. After two hours, I'm still in the same damn state. Driving through West Virginia and Maryland were such a breeze in comparison.

I'm hoping to make friends today! And maybe find a couch!

Why I don't have a Southern accent

2009-08-11T11:42:00.002-04:00

I recently moved up north, and I've now had multiple people comment on my lack of a Southern accent when I mention being from Raleigh. Now, not all Southerners have accents. We watch as much TV in the South as the next region does, so we did grow up hearing the neutral American accent. More to the point, though, is that I'm not a Southerner.

Both of my parents are Midwesterners, born in the state of Michigan where they lived for the first two decades of their lives. They then packed up and moved to South Florida, the land of my birth. I come from a decided Midwestern heritage. My ancestors were among some of first whites to live in Michigan.

And then there's South Florida, which is in no way a part of the American South, even though it's farther south than the South. South Florida is home to a lot of Northerners who got tired of frigid winters. We joke about the bad French Canadian drivers who have taken over the Florida roads. There are a lot of New Yorkers. Miami is a big city, so it has the fast-paced vibe of most big cities, including a lot of easily frustrated inhabitants. I get satisfaction from flicking people off, especially bad drivers. That's definitely my South Florida side showing through.

In addition to all the cranky Northerners, South Florida also has a large Hispanic population, particularly from Cuba and Venezuela. I think Little Havana has more Cubans than the island of Cuba.

South Florida was an interesting place to spend my first ten years. Then we moved to North Carolina. Certainly that would make me a Southerner and imbued me with a charming accent, right?

Maybe if we'd moved to any other part of the state. Instead, we moved to a town sometimes called the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. No one had a Southern accent there. Most people moved there to work for SAS or a biotech firm. I had to go to college to encounter southern accents, and I think my manner of speaking was pretty set before then.

So here I am, up in the Great Snowy North, with no interesting accent. I wonder if I'm returning "home" since I have such a Midwestern heritage. But maybe I don't have a geographical "home." Maybe I'm destined to be itinerant and occasionally pack up all my belongings and find a new place to live. Either way, I think I'm stuck with my very neutral American accent.

Some UU beliefs

2009-08-09T13:31:00.002-04:00

I went to church this morning, which did a lot to calm my moving blues. I've been lonely and out-of-sorts this past week, due to living in a brand new place where I know very few people. First Unitarian Society of Ithaca to the rescue!

First off, it was nice to be around welcoming people. I met people who told me about their lives, were interested in my life, and even went to lunch with me to continue conversations. I miss regular interaction with people. This past week I've mostly spoken to the people who sell me my tea and sandwiches, which isn't the same as having a true conversation. I enjoy conversations!

Hearing a good sermon really made me feel more peaceful and also made me think. I've been meaning to share some of my thoughts about UUs and beliefs. Today's sermon was a good segue.

Unitarian Universalism is different from other religions because all UUs are expected to find their own sense of truth and meaning while supporting others in their quest for finding truth. As a result, we don't all believe the same things. Some are atheists. Some are deists. Some are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and/or more. There are a lot of secular humanists. Many people find meaning in nature. There's no telling what any UU's personal theology will entail.

Yet we do have our similarities. We all believe different things, but we're united by thinking that how we live our lives matters more than personal belief. The fact that multiple women at the church helped raise money for hospice care by swimming across Lake Cayuga matters more than whether or not they believe in God. Their act of swimming over a mile in white caps shows that they have compassion and the dedication to improve the lives of others. It's not that good works matter more than faith. It's that how you live your life is an outpouring of your faith. Religion is putting values in action.

I attended an ordination in May that discussed ways that we put religion in action. Two things that stuck with me relate to ministry and worship.

Any act of caring is an act of ministry. Any time that you help another person is an example of you ministering to the world. Cooking someone a meal, listening to a friend, and working for social justice are all examples of ministry.

Worship of course happens within a church during a church service, but that is not the only valid form of worship. Any act of mindfulness can be a type of worship. For me, hiking around Taughannock Falls yesterday was worship. Playing my cello is worship. Writing is worship. Paying attention to the world around me opens me up to inspiration and new understandings of truth.

Going to church was good for me. I feel more at peace now and ready to once again go minister to the world.

Oops

2009-07-29T14:24:00.002-04:00

I meant post about preparing to apply for grad school today. I've even already written the post. And I just put the journal containing my words of wisdom into a box, buried it with other belongings, and taped it shut. I will post it some day when I have unpacked. In other words, by year 2012.

The World is Flat

2009-07-28T12:41:00.003-04:00

I started reading Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. I'm only 4 years late to the party, though I have a feeling that I'll get more out of it now than I would have as a college sophomore. I've gotten a bit smarter and wiser with age.

So far, I've only read the first chapter, but it's already left me amazed. I hadn't imagined all the services that can be outsourced! In 2005, accountants in India prepared 400,000 American tax returns. I knew that CAT scans were sent to India as well, especially ones that need to read during the American night time. You can hire your own remote personal assistant to do research and write presentations for you.

My favorite example included outsourcing within the United States. Some McDonald's franchises outsource their drive-thru ordering. The person who takes your order might be sitting in a different state. They're faster and more accurate. As a former drive-thru worker (oh what a fun job that was), I took orders, took payments, and handed food to the customers. Only having to take the order would have made that process more efficient.

Friedman talks a lot about call center jobs in India, as well as ones that are now starting up in China. I doubt there are many Americans who would be excited to work at a call center, but in India and China, these are well-paying jobs that with schedules that allow their employees to also go to school.

I was reminded of little-known movie Outsourced which is excellent and should be watched by more people (they don't pay me, I promise). In it, the main character Todd loses his job as a call center manager and has to travel to India where he will train his replacement. There's a lot of situational humor as Todd deals with culture shock and everyone mispronouncing his name. In the end, he embraces Indian culture, meets a pretty girl (of course), and realizes that he hates his job and should find something he enjoys doing with his life.

I'm looking forward to continuing this book. Globalization is scary, especially now when our unemployment rates are so high. I think I'm safe at the moment, but what if it becomes cheap and easy to outsource scientists? Eventually, India and China won't be content with our low-end jobs and will start coming up with their own amazing innovative ideas (as they should). This flat world is an exciting one though.

Thoreau

2009-07-24T13:19:00.003-04:00

While cleaning my room, I found a program from a church service that I attended 2 years ago. I wrote out a Thoreau poem on the cover. Here's what I copied down:

Why should we live in such a hurry and waste of life?

We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.

I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not when I come to die, discover that I have not live.

I do not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear,

Nor do I wish to practice resignation, unless it is quite necessary.

I wish to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,

I want to cut a broad swath, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

If it proves to be mean, then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world.

Or if it is sublime, to know it by experience and to be able to give a true account of it.

Moving blues

2009-07-22T16:11:00.002-04:00

At age 5, I declared that I was never moving again.

My mom pointed out that at some point kids and their parents no longer live together. Of course I understood that. I never said that she wasn't ever going to move again. Leaving our house in Miami Shores, FL was her responsibility, not mine.

I have since moved, one major move to our new home in NC at age 10, and then many mini-moves into dorms and my current apartment.

I feel a deep connection to my 5 year old self now. The idea of packing up everything I own, saying goodbye to everyone I love, and leaving all that I know is pretty terrifying.

Applying to Grad School: Introduction

2009-07-22T10:45:00.003-04:00

I applied to eight graduate schools in fall of 2008. My applications were all for Ph.D. programs in biomedical sciences. At the time, I looked for advice in books and on the Internet. Books, my age-old standby, were useless. They exist for students applying to business and professional schools, but not to science fields. The Internet was better. Still, there was a lot of advice spread over many blogs and message boards.

So here's my story. Of my eight schools, two rejected me and six offered me interviews. I accepted five interview invitations and subsequently got into those five schools. I don't know how applicable my experience is to other fields, but assume most fields require the GRE, transcripts, a personal statement, and an interview. I happen to now know a lot about those things.

Over the next eight weeks, I'll share information on:

I. Preparation
II. The Price to Apply
III. Where to Apply
IV. GREs
V. Application Logistics
VI. The Personal Statement
VII. The Interview
VIII. Choosing a School

My favorite online resources were applyingtograd and The Grad Cafe. Many questions have been answered, and the Grad Cafe is a great place to find other people who are freaking out about their decisions.

DIY Haircuts

2009-07-21T16:41:00.005-04:00

One way that I save money is by cutting my own hair. The first time that I gave myself a haircut was around 7:00 am, a time at which I'm usually dazed and confused. That morning was no different. I stared in the mirror and blurrily thought about paying someone to cut in a straight line so that I could have a much needed trim. "I could do that," I told myself and reached for a convenient pair of scissors.

Cutting off a large chunk of hair had the same effect as an espresso shot. I was wide awake and horrified. Biochemistry class was a mere 2 hours away, and there I was, missing an important body part. I looked like someone had attacked me with a weed wacker in my sleep. I had to continue on.

The haircut turned out fine, and hair cutting became a normal part of my life. I only did trims which were easy enough with my long-ish hair.

Then came the day last August when I cut off a lot of hair. It had been a particularly horrid day. Cutting off most of my hair was cathartic. I looked like a new person afterwards and that made me feel a lot better. I had a moment of doubt during the cutting process where I thought I would need professional help to save me from looking like a disgruntled hedgehog, but I kept cutting and it all worked out.

Today may be the incident that causes me to seek professional help. At least professional hair-cutting help.

I had even been warned that DIY haircuts were a bad idea this very morning.

I gave myself bangs.

It may be the hair-pocalyse.

If the world ends tomorrow, it's likely my fault. I'm sorry, world!

EDIT: I now like my hair. The world didn't end. Hooray!

Music, science, and Blink

2009-07-17T12:02:00.004-04:00

Why is the peer review system in science a single-blind process instead of double-blind? When I submit a paper to a journal (someday), my reviewers will be able to know my name and the names of all my coauthors. Then I'll get back the reviewers' comments, read all their critiques, design new experiments, and resubmit the paper, all while never knowing who those reviewers are.

I've wondered why this super-important process in science is single-blind before. I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, which is about snap judgments made in the blink of an eye. Everyone makes judgments that they're not even aware of.

A lot of it is socialization, as seen by tests like the Implicit Association Test (IAT). I've taken the IAT before, and it's a discomfiting experience. Words flash on a screen, and you have to categorize them. In one form, the words consist of names, career-type words, and family-type words. If a word relates to male or career, you click one button. If it relates to female or family, you click another. That one is easy for most people. More tricky is when one button indicates female or career and the other button indicates male or family. People slow down and start making mistakes then.

I took a different form of the test, where pictures of black or white people were interspersed with words that were clearly good or bad. To my dismay, the test was more difficult when Good and African American were on the same side of the screen instead of when Good and European American were on the same side. I even knew what the test was looking for because I'd heard of the IAT before. It didn't matter. I still slowed down and made mistakes that showed that I unconsciously associate white people with good and black people with bad. Very uncomfortable. You can take the test too if you want if you visit this website.

So what does this have to do with peer review? Let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised if papers coming from well-known labs, labs that deserve respect because of the quality of past science, had an easier time getting published than equally good science done by a less familiar lab. The reviewers probably wouldn't even know that they were favoring the better known labs.

As an example from a different field, orchestra auditions became double-blind in the late 1970s. Before then, orchestras were predominantly male. Women are often smaller, so conductors assumed that they had less lung capacity, smaller fingers, and different temperaments, all factors that would harm their instrument-playing abilities. Women tried out for orchestras, but they rarely got in. Then they began auditioning behind a screen.

The number of women in top orchestras has increased five-fold since then. Guess what? Ladies can play instruments too! My favorite example from Blink is of Julie Landsman who auditioned for first-chair French horn player. She played beautifully and wowed those who were holding the audition. They immediately told her that she had the role and asked to see her. They were in shock, and not just because she was a woman. No, they were in shock because she was a substitute player for the orchestra, meaning they had all heard her perform before and never realized her amazing talent.

We all have implicit biases. Some fields, like music, acknowledge this fact and have altered their hiring structure to minimize the likelihood of bias playing a role. Why hasn't science done so?

Intro post

2009-07-14T15:42:00.003-04:00

Back when I started college, I started a pseudonymonous blog on Livejournal. My friends used LJ to keep in touch as we moved away and began new lives. That worked well for a couple of years, but then we got busy and stopped updating as often.

We then switched more to Facebook, especially as the site grew and we could share embarassing pictures of each other. Alas, then we started trying to get jobs and stupid/drunken photos weren't as appealing anymore.

Then I joined Twitter and distilled all of my thoughts in to 140 characters or fewer. I like Twitter and still use it, but it's difficult to be profound or even very interesting in that amount of space.

So here I am again, about to start another chapter in my life, and I am beginning to blog again. I've traveled through the lands of social networking and have returned to the blog. It's almost retro now! This time, I'm using my real true name. I'm pretty sure that there are only two Erin Wissinks in the United States (at least, that's how many are on Facebook, and that's what really counts, right?), so I'm leaving any semblance to pseudonymity behind. I feel safe saying that I'll be the only Erin Wissink at Cornell University, attempting to earn a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology.

Join me as I travel to the Great Snowy North and become a Professional Student. On the way, I'll probably talk about my schooling and development as a scientist, but I expect I'll also talk about forming connections in a new city, leaving behind my friends and family, going to a church that accepts atheists, cooking new foods, living on the cheap, enjoying life to the fullest.