Goodbye Blog!
I know that I have not updated my site in a while, and I apologize for that. The end of the semester is always crazy for seniors. Since I will be graduating in a month, I figured I would give you one last update on my life as well as the life I have planned after college.
Since I have last talked to you, many things have happened. In early March I went on Spring Break to Las Vegas with 7 of my best friends here at JMU. It was truly an experience, much different from anything that I have ever seen here in Harrisonburg. It was the perfect place to go to with you closest friends! But of course what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Recently, I have been accepted in to the Masters part-time Program for Advanced Biotechnology Studies at Johns Hopkins University. I can not tell you how excited I was to get that letter in the mail. Since the program is only part-time, I plan on finding a full-time job in the area of Homeland Security. This may be a lot for me my first year out of college, but I am confident that I can do it!
Next Friday, I will be presenting my Senior Thesis at the Symposium. I can not express to you how nerve racking this is going to be. Even though my lab partner and I have our paper finished, there is still a lot of stress on our shoulders. We have been getting together a couple hours each day to put together our presentation. Tomorrow night we are giving a practice run of our presentation in front of all the students that were working in lab this past summer. Hopefully the more I practice my speech, the better it will be and the more confident I will become in giving it.
Lastly, I can not tell you how happy I am that I choose JMU to be my college of choice as well as being an ISAT major. Yes, it has its ups and downs, but the experience and knowledge that I have gained I will take with me forever. I have met some of my closest friends while in ISAT. We have all struggled together as well as laughed together. If anyone is trying to decide of JMU is right for you, come and visit the school and I am sure it will win you over. ISAT is a great program for any individual with a keen interest in both science and mathematics. If you are unsure which path you want to choose, like I was, then ISAT is the perfect place for you. It gives you great understanding and skills in all of the areas and provides you with the necessary skills that you need to either go to grad school or enter the real world. The professors are magnificent and are willing to go out of their way to assist you in any way, shape, or form.
If you find yourself with any questions, my email is always available. I’ve had a great time sharing my experience of ISAT with you, and I hope you enjoyed what I have had to say!
Posted by Kristen on April 11, 2006 at 08:49 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Happy Belated Valentine’s Day!!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s Day! I was lucky enough to spend the day with 7 of my closest friends here at JMU. As much fun as yesterday was, it’s now time to face the reality of college once again. This past week I have been spending most of my time getting my applications ready for graduate school by getting a copy of my transcripts to mail to the schools as well as teacher recommendation letters. I’ll be so happy once this is all done!
A little update on classes…
Last week was kind of crazy with 2 exams and a paper. So far my classes are going really well. In my genetics lab unfortunately our research is not going as well as we would like and for that reason we were forced to start our project over. That is the one downside to working in a lab - it is very time consuming and if results do not go as they are suppose to then you have no other choice but to start the project over. Hopefully we don’t run into the same problems again. In my Health Ethics class we just recently took an exam, which I felt went pretty well, but we will have to wait and see.
ISAT update…
After the completion of each class at the end of the semester, the students are provided with forms to evaluate the professor and the class itself. Yesterday, the ISAT students, including myself, were placed into groups of 10 to discuss the ISAT program with the head of the department, Dr. Kander. I was very pleased with how this went, because it showed me that the professors honestly do care what we think of the program and ways that we can help improve it. We were able to discuss as a group the overall program as well as individual classes. Of course I can not repeat any of the information that was discussed in this meeting, but it just goes to show that the professors are continuously trying to find ways to improve the program for upcoming students. This really is a great program to be a part of. The professors are so incredibly understanding and helpful, and it is because of the ISAT program that I was able to meet some of my best friends in college.
Posted by Kristen on February 15, 2006 at 08:47 AM | Link | Email Kristen
A little update...
Hey everyone! The past couple of weeks have been extremely busy! Here is a little update of my life. I am still in the mist of deciding between going to grad school or getting a job, but just recently the possibility of both has crossed my mind. I received an email last week from a professor in the ISAT program informing me of a possible job opportunity with AMEC Biopharmaceuticals. I have been researching the company and it seemed like a great way to start life after JMU, though I still want to pursue further education to get my Master’s. Last Thursday I had a meeting with a professor at Johns Hopkins University to learn more about their program for a Master’s in Biotechnology. The program seems very interesting as well as something that I believe will meet all my needs. After exploring both opportunities I decided to apply for the job position as well as apply for graduate school. In the event that I get both, I plan on working full-time as well as go to grad school part-time. I hope that both work out in my favor, but we will just have to wait and see!
Classes are going fine so far. It’s nice to be able to enjoy a semester for once, rather than be stressed out about classes. Even though I am only taking 4 classes, I still have a lot of work to do for each of them. Last week I had my first exam in genetics. In my opinion the exam was extremely fair and I felt that I studied the correct material for it. Hopefully I did ok on it. This upcoming week I have 2 exams and a paper, all of which I am not ready for yet. My exams are in Medical Terminology and Values in Healthcare, and my paper is a case analysis which is also for my Values in Healthcare class. I have a bad feeling that I will be up sort of late tonight since my paper and one out of my two tests are tomorrow! YIKES!...
Sorry that it has been so long since my last blog. I will try to update it again as soon as I can and I will keep you posted on what is going on with me!.
Please feel free to ask me any questions that you wish!
Posted by Kristen on February 07, 2006 at 10:23 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Good Morning
Good morning! I have to start off apologizing for not updating my site in a while. Even though I am not taking that many classes this semester, I am still extremely busy. This past week I have been working on my grad school applications… and let me tell you, applying to grad school is not an easy thing. It is a very different process than applying to undergraduate schools. What makes it hard is that after you determine which school you want to go to, you must then find that actual program within that school and apply to that. It may sound easy, but yesterday I must have spent at least 2 hours trying to locate the specific program that I wanted to apply to and then find the application that went with that particular program. As of right now, there are 2 schools that I am applying too: George Mason University and Johns Hopkins University. After my research, both schools have excellent graduate programs for Biotechnology/ Biodefense, which is what I think I would like to do after school.
Along with applying to graduate schools, I also have to keep up with my work for my classes. As I have told you before I am taking 3 classes + 1 lab + 1 Senior Thesis class. So far I am enjoying all of my classes. In Genetics, we are currently starting to prepare for our first exam, which is next week. Most of the focus so far in class has been on material that I have already learned in previous classes, which was a nice surprise, mainly involving the life cycle of cells. In my Genetics Lab, we are working with fruit flies. For this lab we are given mutant fruit flies along with wild type fruit flies and we are given the task of crossing them with one another so that in the end we can determine if the phenotypes from our mutant fruit flies are dominant or recessive, as well as autosomal or sex-linked. The lab itself is not very complicated but it is time consuming because it is done entirely on our own. My other classes are also going well so far. In Medical Terminology we show up once a week and take a test on medical terms so it is set up as a teach-yourself type class which I do not mind. And my last class is Values in Health Care which is based around the Ethical principles within health care issues. I have a paper due tomorrow that I must define what I consider is the most important core principle for Health care based out of: Patient Autonomy, Truthfulness, Maintaining Confidentiality, Doing What is Promised, Beneficence, Justice. Then I must define that term as my personal definition of the principle and how it will apply to my work after school. The paper only needs to be 2-3 pages but it will require some planning and thinking which I hope to finish sometime this afternoon.
Well I guess that is all for now! Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their week! Feel free to ask me any questions about my classes or applying to grad schools.
Posted by Kristen on January 25, 2006 at 08:53 AM | Link | Email Kristen
7 Semesters Down... Only 1 More To Go
It’s finaly 2006, the year of graduation. It’s hard to believe that it starts my last semester here at JMU. The time absolutely flew by, but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I had a great winter break spending most of my time with my family and relaxing. It was definitely much needed from all the stress of last semester. I did end up using some of my time at home to help decide what I will be doing next year. I took my GRE’s which is similar to the SAT’s but for graduate school and have a few applications which I will be working on over the next couple of weeks. I still haven’t decided if graduate school is what I really want to do so I will hopefully be submitting my resume to a few companies and possibly get a few interviews to help explore my options.
When scheduling for my classes this semester, I decided to go a bit easier on myself so instead of taking 20 credits like last I am only taking 13. I want to be able to enjoy the time that I still have with my friends here instead of worrying when I will be able to get all my work done. Today I have one class, Genetics, and the lab for that class. Looking at the classes that I will be taking I think this will be my hardest one, but hopefully it’s not too bad. Along with Genetics I will be taking another class in Health Administration as well as Medical Terminology. This gives me a total of 10 credits. I am also registered for my Senior Thesis class, but the nice thing about that is my thesis is pretty much all done. All that my partner and I have left for that is to give our presentation in April. I am extremely excited that we’ve finished the majority of our paper because that takes a lot of extra stress off my shoulders.
Well I hope everyone enjoyed their winter break. If you come across any questions please free feel to ask!
Posted by Kristen on January 09, 2006 at 10:29 AM | Link | Email Kristen
As the week progresses… the stress increases
It seems like as the week continues, more and more things are popping up on my To-Do List. The end of the semester is always a very stressful time for students. As I told you before, my goal for this week was to finish my 2 papers by Friday. So far one of my papers is almost completely done, and the second one I’ve been able to make an outline. So, so-far-so-good. Incase I haven’t told you about my papers, here’s what they are on. For my first paper that I have almost completed, our assignment was to research a disease, understand its pathology, and research the current treatment. After this we must come up with our own alternative way to treat the disease. It’s a kind of interesting assignment, but coming up with our own alternative way in curing the disease has become a bit tricky. My second paper that I am writing is comparing 2 short stories for my geng 248 class. Not as interesting as my first paper.
Later on this afternoon I will be meeting with my lab partner to develop a presentation that we will be giving to the class tomorrow. Our presentation will be on Rituxan, the first monoclonal antibody. Hopefully all will go well with that. Then later on tonight I will be spending most of my time studying for a quiz that I will be having at 9:30am tomorrow. As this week progresses, the work load only increases. As long as I can have my 2 papers done, it will relieve a lot of the stress that is on top of my shoulders right now.
Well I should probably get back to writing. Hope everyone is having a great week!
Posted by Kristen on November 30, 2005 at 02:50 PM | Link | Email Kristen
Back from Thanksgiving... 3 weeks and counting
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It was so nice to be home, away from work, just relaxing. For my Thanksgiving this year I went up to New York City with my roommate to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was awesome. This has been something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. We took a 6 o’clock train from Long Island to NYC in order to get in a good area to watch the parade. Our goal was to make it as close as possible to 34th Street so that we could see the shows. We ended up making it to 35th Street. We couldn’t see the shows perfectly, but it was awesome because you could still hear all the music. Here are some pictures that I took while at the parade.
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Unfortunately break is now over and I’m forced to face the real world of college once again. We only have 2 weeks of classes and 1 week of finals left till Christmas break. This may seem like a long time, but it’s really not, especially for the amount of work that I still need to finish. So far I have 2 papers, 1 presentation, 2 quizzes, and 6 exams until I can officially declare the end of my semester. The thing that is going to be challenging is that my 2 papers and 3 out of my 6 exams all fall on the same day. I know that eventually all the work will get done, but it can become stressful. In order to tackle a situation like this you need to be able to manage your time wisely. My goal this week is to finish my 2 papers so that next week I can devote my time to studying for my exams. Of course this is all more easily said than done, but we’ll see.
Posted by Kristen on November 28, 2005 at 10:00 AM | Link | Email Kristen
