I was contemplating on whether or not I should even be writing anything. This week was crazy and shitty and perhaps emotionally unstable lol.
In short:
Sunday
Got four hours of sleep and used all day to prepare mock interview packages for Communications. Had a bad headache from lack of sleep (that was not caught up on properly).
Monday
Mock interviews were okay, even though I was not able to answer questions properly… I honestly think that it will be really easy to tell if I prepared well for a question or not, because if I get asked a question that I had not prepared for, I’d start to stutter and lose track of what I want to say.
Then there were lectures. Normal day I suppose.
Tuesday
Had the longest lab day in my entire life (so far). Was driven crazy with Microbiology + Cell Biology lab going on at the same time, so had to split tasks with partner to be able to leave at an acceptable time. Chem lab also spent half of my lunch hour.
Wednesday
Began adding GFP and making cells fluoresce in Cell Biology lab. Lab wasn’t too bad today but there was an extra hour to spare that I could have used as an extra hour of sleep. Day felt super long and I really wanted to nap but I had to understand probability before the quiz the next day.
Thursday
The day where everything kind of went kaboom and nothing went right.
Chem quiz I’m not sure about my performance on (I got most of the questions, except one where the wording was really weird…) but that was the least of my worries compared to everyone else. Probability quiz was awful and I definitely failed it. I will probably continue to dislike probability until I fully understand it someday… whenever that will be.
Then after my awful day, I went to the lab to prepare cherry tree buds to be inoculated into some growth medium and propagated into trees or flowers (hopefully). And I was highly unsuccessful. Out of the 5 buds I worked on, I only managed to get one of them into medium. The rest I either overshot and cut into pieces lol, or accidentally flicked off the petri dish and into non-sterile environment. Shame. Even now I am still not happy about that and I really hope to get extra chances to work on my cutting skills… if Keith still trusts me with this task
.
But yeaahhh I went home and was really depressed but I still had to crank out resume + CL packages for co-op. Hopefully I didn’t express any negative thoughts in them.
Friday (today)
Day was somewhat normal up until this afternoon. Cell Biology quiz went without a hitch hopefully… the only reason I would get anything wrong is if I interpreted the question incorrectly, because I am confident I know my amino acids better than many others because I actually bothered to try and remember their structures as well. Ah, good ol’ winter break studying.
During lunch we worked on our fibroblast cells by looking at their fluorescence readings under the fluorescence microscope and with a plate reader. I’m not sure how to interpret the numbers yet but that’s okay. Then I found out that lab was “cancelled” today for Plant Phys because it was a lab dedicated to prepping cherry buds and I had already “done” them. I don’t know how to explain how I feel about that lol. So most of us were just hanging around and waiting to lyse our fibroblast cells and obtain the supernatant after microfuging the samples… where the sample will be used for next lab.
So after a bunch of us completed the lysing and stuff, everyone kind of went into the hall and “chilled”… if you could consider worrying about future co-op something “chill” to discuss.
So today there was supposed to be a Biotech event involving bowling and dinner somewhere. I will honestly say that the plans were a little “iffy” for me this time but I still decided to go when the event was announced. However, I did not anticipate my Thursday AND this week overall to be so depressing and I immediately decided NOT to go after my awful experience with wasting cherry buds and legit failing my probability quiz (NTS: ask for more practice from David).
I know my problem when I have negative moods sometimes – I know it is better if I skipped out on events that I will not enjoy going to and I don’t want to explain why because I doubt anyone would understand and consider it a good reason to bail? I don’t want to be forced to participate in an event, shell out lots of money and be sour and glum the entire evening. I don’t pretend when it comes to emotions and I express exactly what’s on my mind. Heck, even my parents are fed up with me when this happens and they always tell me I should have decided to stay home instead of showing my ugly face in public.
And another thing – I don’t know about everyone else, but I think catching up on school stuff should be my number one priority right now, even more than going to an event to relax and have fun. My idea of fun at the end of an extra long sleep-deprived week is to catch up on sleep and begin clearing out my piles of homework and to-do papers on top of my printer scanner. When I got home, I was close to collapsing from being so tired and I randomly fell asleep for 2 hours with the light on because it was simply that bad. Many of you can survive on really low hours of sleep but I can’t survive for long. Also I have this aching uneasy feeling in my chest area because the only course I can say I have caught up on is Chemistry… and the second being Math because of weekly quiz review (and I haven’t 100% caught up on it either). I don’t need to improve my study habits for Chem; in fact I need to do so for the rest of my 4 courses. Probably should have used Jimmy’s study habits papers for some other course instead.
So when one of the club execs heard I was planning not to go, this person went off on a tangent about how we all confirmed on going but we shouldn’t be so irresponsible and not give any notice and just decide to not go last minute because all the bowling lanes and dinner seats were booked already. I completely understand and I am at fault for not making the decision earlier despite ANY reason at all. However I felt really pressured and guilty after getting lectured, and saying “no” for the final time felt like I was making the worst decision of my life. Props for having great persuasion skills I guess. I went home and felt super depressed again because of that. It’s probably not as big of a deal as I’ve made it but what’s done is done and what feelings I had were felt.
In Conclusion
This week made me bring up thoughts about whether or not Biotech was the correct choice in terms of WORKLOAD. I believe the work and time we have put into our work so far is comparable to working in a real lab, where you must maintain several different lab protocols at the same time and maybe spend OT and lunch hours working on stuff. I understand that nothing comes easy in life and that you have to put in the effort to get what you want, but is it worth suffering from 4 years of intense studying, lack of sleep, deteriorating health and stress over getting a co-op position just to get a degree? This is why I will not be dabbling with med school at all… not that I ever really wanted to. I think I was always more attracted to Dentistry lol, but the education is too expensive and they overprice patients. Even Dental Hygiene cost over 17k a year when I went to the info session on it a few years back, so I don’t want to imagine how much an actual Dentistry degree costs.
Despite how I feel, I have always loved conducting labs. I think pretty much all of my labs have a fun aspect to it, whether it be trying to get isolated colonies from a streak plate, getting cool gel images from SDS-PAGE, making cells fluoresce with GFP, or even just staring at plant cells under the microscope. Labs are where I’m at for my future, and Biotech exceeds all other degrees when it comes to lab work and training. I just wonder why employers don’t contact a lot more of our students for a co-op position so far, since we are all 100% qualified for lab jobs. Perhaps my next cover letter needs to emphasize that.
Thus my main worry is catching up on the “knowledge” aspect of my courses because I’ve spent enough time on lab note booking and lab prep and stuff.
Finally, this entry was long. 1536 words.
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