Bread Boards and Breaks
SO! Long time no see, but winter break is a month and I took that month OFF from work.
Well, sort of.
I did do some busy work for one of my teachers at home on my own computer, but it was paid and hardly counts. Actually, these kinds of things are easy ways to accumulate experience for your resume. I can now say that I was “independently contracted to use MS Excel to enter records for an online Knowledge Base.” Every little bit of experience helps.
This semester I’m finishing off my Biology Minor by taking BIO 124 – Ecology and Evolution, and getting the rest of my ISAT sector courses out of the way. This makes for a rough semester, but next year I’ll be able to focus on my concentration classes and…you know, graduating!
As for my standard activity update:
In my last ISAT 253 class (Instrumentation and Measurement), we were investigating accuracy and precision of instruments, namely voltmeters and resistors. We were working with breadboards (the green plastic boards on the inside of your computer) and little tiny resistors. The resistors look like little bug sized beads when you see them on computer breadboards. My lab partner and I, who shall remain nameless in order to protect her from a moment of nerdiness, took pictures of our lab setup on her phone!
Here is our beautiful little breadboard:
Outside of school, I managed to almost get snowed in at Masanutten last weekend. It was the first day that had a significant amount of snow, and my family was visiting from North Carolina and Virginia Beach to stay at a time share on the resort. For any potential JMU or Resort drivers: only 4 wheel drive can make it up or down the mountain roads in snowy conditions! While I was (attempting) to ski, my parents figured this out.
Hope everyone is still shooting for their New Year’s Resolutions! I’m getting back on a regular posting schedule, now that I’ve successfully adapted to my new semester schedule.
Posted by Sarah on January 30, 2007 at 01:21 PM | Link | Email Sarah | TrackBack (0)
Festival-Shmestival
One week until exams.
As I’ve mentioned before, most ISAT kids spend most of their meal plan in Festival. Festival is similar to a food court in the mall. It’s one of the better dining establishments on campus (if you ask me), but it can get a little old to eat there day in and day out. On Friday, a few fellow ISAT students and I were walking through the ISAT building towards Festival when a lady in a little white chef coat came running after us. She started yelling at us, “Hey wait! Are you hungry?! Do you have time to sit down and eat?! Please, come here!”
We did. Apparently, a nutrition course is held in the HHS building (Health and Human Services, which is connected to the ISAT building) that focuses on food quantity and preparation (or something). In any event, the nice lady informed us that one table had not shown up to judge her students’ food, and she needed hungry volunteers. We accepted the duty.
What we got was a surprisingly nice set up in a secret room on the basement floor. The food was Mexican, and thus all the tables were decorated with tiny sombreros, Mexican flags, and lots of tortilla chips. We were served rice, enchiladas (beef or cheese or one of each), a choice of beverage, and even a fancy dessert of sherbet and freshly made donut holes…for FREE! To me, a college student suffering from the typical college student financial status, this was a more than welcome surprise. All we had to do was fill out a comment card following the meal.
After a rough week full of tests and projects and studying, a free Mexican meal with miniature sombreros is just what I needed. The ISAT building is full of surprises.
Posted by Sarah on December 04, 2006 at 08:23 AM | Link | Email Sarah | TrackBack (0)
Glowing Green Jellyfish?
Thanksgiving break was much too short. Luckily, there are only 2 weeks left of normal classes…followed by exam week. I guess that’s lucky?
Anyway, tonight I have to finish up a lab notebook for my ISAT 305 class. It is the introductory lab course for the biotech sector, and you can take it with or without the accompanying biotech course. I’ve already taken a bunch of biology, so I opted out of the lecture.
The course so far has been focused on creating a recombinant plasmid, that’s right, genetic engineering. Mad scientist stuff. The lab is very similar to one I did in genetics (Bio 224, I think), it involves taking a gene that codes for a green fluorescent protein (GFP) and sticking it in bacterial DNA. The protein is originally found in jellyfish (complements nasa.gov), and makes them glow. When you put a plasmid (bacterial DNA that is circular) containing the gene into bacteria, they glow too!
I’m fuzzy on the details, but if you rent The Hulk from a few years ago GFP is mentioned in the opening credits. I know, it wasn’t the best movie. But you see that the crazy pre-Hulk scientist was experimenting with the GFP, perhaps explaining why the Hulk is green? Maybe ISAT students should get into the movie making business too.
In the mean time, I’m going to finish my lab write-ups. Feel free to email me anytime with questions, good luck getting through this last part of the semester!
Posted by Sarah on November 29, 2006 at 08:24 AM | Link | Email Sarah | TrackBack (0)
ISAT vs. Biology, laboratory round.
A few things to start off with:
1. Today I bought a “JMU-Integrated Science and Technology” sweatshirt. Nerdy.
2. Beware of breaks. Any amount of days off usually means lots of exams to get there.
3. It’s getting colder. I don’t like the cold unless it snows.
It’s pretty funny. If you’re an ISAT major, you get to know all the people in the program pretty quickly: you eat at festival a lot, you pretty much live in the ISAT building, and now you can dress the same! They were selling these sweatshirts near the main entrance, and I saw at least 5 other people wearing them today.
So, from last time, what do I mean when I talk about ISAT labs and Biology labs? If you are in high school, you might not know that science classes at the university level not only have lecture periods, but generally involve a separate weekly laboratory section as well. The laboratory can be taught by a different teacher, and it usually counts as about a third of your total grade in the class. That said, in the biology major, lab periods are THREE HOURS LONG. In ISAT, they are usually half that.
Why are they different? So far my experience has been that in biology courses, the lab is long enough to run typical lab procedures. This means that if you start an agarose gel electrophoresis procedure, you sit there until its done, maybe work on something else in the meantime, and then finish up with staining and getting your photograph all in one sitting. In fact, multiple procedures are usually completed.
How pretty! One I made a year or so ago! (In biology)
In the ISAT lab I’m taking this semester, the teacher’s assistants (TA’s) take over after you get the gel started, and you get a printout/photo of your results the next class. You see how its done, try it yourself, and usually get to see the equipment used to finish the procedure and how it works.
I find that the ISAT laboratory periods provide you with a working knowledge of how real world lab’s are operating. The gory details are spared for those who want to learn them in the upper level courses, and at the same time everyone is exposed to the basic principles. This allows ISAT courses to cover a broader spectrum of information in a limited amount of time.
This trend is one of the ISAT program’s strong points. Students have 7 sectors (or interest areas) to choose from, and you have to pick three to pursue for your major. The one you are most interested in becomes your concentration. This process gives you a background in multiple areas, which is extremely useful in understanding how your concentration is related to other technical fields.
End point being, ISAT lets you choose which gory details you want to get involved with, which is often more control than offered by other programs. Oh, and when I say watch out for breaks, I mean it. I had 4 exams in the past 5 school days. Plus projects. You earn your time off apparently.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted by Sarah on November 16, 2006 at 08:20 AM | Link | Email Sarah | TrackBack (0)
Intro to ISAT
Alright, prospective students. Just by navigating your way to this site has proved that you are much more internet/tech savvy than I was pre-college. Hopefully I've improved, but bear with me this will be my first attempt at blogging.
This site is meant to give students (whether current JMU or prospective JMU) a look into the ISAT program. As such, I'll be giving you guys a look at what ISAT projects, classes, students, teachers, etc. are like given my experience. Given that I didn't start out in ISAT, and have a little experience with the biology and health science majors, I'll try and give some insight into how the ISAT program is different from anything else at JMU.
But how did I get to ISAT anyway?
Easy. I tried everything else.
At least everything concerned with science (excluding political science. no thanks). I started out clueless freshman year, and tried my hand at the biology classes. To be a biology major, you eventually take lots of straight biology courses (obviously), a good amount of chemistry, some physics, and some standard math like calculus and statistics. This sounded fine to me, and at first I really enjoyed the in depth curriculum and the challenge of the course load. Sophomore year, things started to change. I realized that
a) I probably didn't want to go to medical/graduate school right away
b) I didn't want to do laboratory research
c) I didn't want to teach biology and
d) I didn't belong in the major.
I think the pre-med/pre-PA/pre-anything health program(s) at JMU are great, don't get me wrong. However, I found myself overwhelmed by a workload that didn’t even correspond to my career goals. Not that I really had any career goals at the time, but I realized a biology major probably wouldn't get me where I wanted to go. So, I switched.
I never declared as a freshman, so by switch I simply mean I tried to take some introductory classes to other majors during my sophomore year. Health Science was a no go, as it still involved medical careers I wasn't pursuing.
Then I found ISAT 131. A lot of my ISAT friends/peers considered the class just a standard boring intro class, but for me it was everything I was interested in condensed into a class, and better yet a major. I found that ISAT offered area’s of study that were the highlights of current scientific development and technological careers. The ISAT program combines all the newest, most relevant subjects into one highly differentiated, but still highly coordinated program of study.
Next time: ISAT lab's to Biology lab's, and how ISAT is bringing back Renaissance Men/Women.
Posted by Sarah on November 10, 2006 at 02:09 PM | Link | Email Sarah | TrackBack (0)
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