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Halloween!!!
I have to apologize again for not updating my site last week very much. It turned out that I was sick majority of the week while trying to study for 2 exams as well as prepare for Homecoming. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate in many of the Homecoming events last week because most of the time I couldn’t move from my bed. Being sick at school is certainly no fun, especially during one of the biggest weekends at JMU! Luckily the health center was able to provide me with some antibiotics that will work on getting me better ASAP!
Thankfully, this week does not seem like it will be as hectic as the past week. No Exams + No Papers = A Good Week For Me.
By the way… HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I always love it during this time of year. The leaves are changing, the weather is cooler, and you get to watch scary movies all the time. Tonight for my Halloween plans, some of my friends will be coming over to my apartment for a little get-together. It should be a lot of fun hanging out with all my friends, in costume of course. I hope you enjoy your Halloween! Have a Spooky Day!
Posted by Kristen on October 31, 2005 11:48 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Homecoming Week
Sorry for not updating my site last week. I ended up having 2 huge midterms last week, and because of that I spent at least 12 hours-15 hours a day on campus before returning to my apartment. It was a little crazy. Thankfully, we had Friday off due to fall break. Since we had the extra day off, I drove back to Jersey on Thursday night to spend time with my family because I haven’t seen them since August. It was great being home and getting some much needed rest in my bed. It was also my grandfather’s birthday on Sunday; my family threw him a huge surprise party which was awesome. I got to see all my distant relatives and meet some of my extended family which I have never met before. One downfall about being home was that I became pretty sick, so I wasn’t able to do much. I hope I get better soon because I have 3 midterms this week. I guess this is the price I must pay for taking 21 credits during 1 semester.
On a positive note, this is JMU’s Homecoming Week which I am very excited for. Each night there is something special going on. Wednesday Sunset on the Quad will take place. It is during this event that all the acapella groups will perform. Friday, we will have our annual Homecoming Parade, followed by a pep rally which is always fun. And on Saturday is our football game. I’m so excited for this upcoming weekend because a lot of my friends who graduated last year are coming back and I cant wait!
Before I can have fun, I must first get through this week with my 3 exams! Wish me luck!....
Posted by Kristen on October 25, 2005 09:43 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Midterm Time...
Well this week has most definitely been a busy one. Today I had one of my big midterm exams. It was for my Health Administration class. Unlike high school where you generally have multiple tests throughout the school year, in college you might only have two exams (midterm and final) for a class, depending on your professor’s preference. This is the case for my Administration class and it was for this very reason why I tried to spend a lot of time focusing on the material. The exam was comprised of 6 different chapters and was made up of multiple choice, define the definition, short answer, as well as essay questions. Overall I feel like I have prepared myself to the best of my ability, but that could all change once I get my exam back. Next week, I still have 3 more midterm exams so I can only imagine how crazy and stressed I am going to be.
After finishing up my crazy day, I had a meeting for the Virginia Biotechnology Association (VABIO). During this meeting we had a guest speaker from Abbot Labs come to talk to us about his experiences in the Biotech field. It was very interesting hearing him speak about the FDA rules and regulations because last year I had a course here in ISAT taught by Dr. McKown about the Codes of Federal Regulation (CFR) as well as the regulations that must be followed. It was really cool being able to apply all the stuff I learned in class to issues that were going on in the real world.
I am so happy that finally this crazy week is coming to an end. But there’s still one more day that I have to get through first. Luckily for me, I only have one class on Friday’s. Though I do have a meeting with my senior thesis partner; it is during this meeting that we hope to have our introduction to our thesis completely done. Hopefully we will be able to accomplish this, and I have all the faith in the world that we will! After we finish this section, we hope to give it to our advisor so that he would have a time to read over and edit anything he feels should be changed. It’s great that we are able to get this done now, because come time in spring when everyone is working on their thesis, we will be able to have ours finished and complete our senior year stress free.
Well that’s all for now. So far I don’t have too many plans for the weekend, so I hope to hang around and chill out for a bit before next week of craziness begins.
Posted by Kristen on October 14, 2005 10:07 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Awesome Last Week... Busy This Week
The end of last week was absolutely amazing, and like I promised I have some pictures for you from the concerts I went to.
Here are the pictures from Howie Day
click to enlarge
Here are the pictures from Virginia Coalition (VACO)
click to enlarge
As you can tell from the pictures, my friends and I were as close as we possibly could be to the performers. It was absolutely amazing. It was awesome being able to watch Howie Day record his music in front of you and then play on top of it. By the end of the song it sounded like he had an entire band playing with. I also thought that VACO was unbelievable. They are one of my favorite groups and one of the reasons why I had so much fun there was because they played all the songs that I knew. My friends made a special request to them to play my favorite song because it was not on the set list and they did! Friday night I ended up going to another concert at The Pub. My roommate and I saw Mia Jones. She first came to JMU my sophomore year and opened for Phil Vassar. She did an amazing job as well. If you ever get the chance to see any of those performers perform, I highly recommend that you take the opportunity.
This upcoming week should be a lot work for me. On Thursday I have a huge exam in my Health Administration class. It will be one of my two exams that I have this semester so it is very important that I do well on it. Besides studying for that exam, my lab partner and I have decide d to have our introduction complete by Friday for our senior thesis paper. Since I decided to be a bum for most of the weekend, I’ve been working on my introduction for most of the morning so that the rest of the week can be spent preparing for my exam. So far that is the major work that I know of that I have due this week, but I’m sure throughout the duration of the week my professors will assign other work on top of what I already have due.
Posted by Kristen on October 10, 2005 03:19 PM | Link | Email Kristen
Ups and Downs
This past week has had its ups and downs. Within the course of the week I had 2 papers + homework + a quiz, as well as go to 2 concerts. Over the weekend, like I said before, I tried to finish both of my papers so that I wouldn’t have to worry about them during the week. As ideal as it would be to finish 2 papers, I only managed to complete one. The major paper that I worked on this week was for my Health Administration class. The goal of the paper was to read a case-study from our book and then we had to take the role as the consultant from the story and write a memorandum to the president of the organization to explain to him the problems occurring within his organization, reasons why the problems are occurring, possible alternatives to the problems and then finally our recommendation on what we feel is the best alternative. The paper was more time consuming than I expected to be but wasn’t that bad.
One of the cool things this week was I had the opportunity to put the skills that I acquired in lab into use in my class. My homework assignment for my Biotech Industry & Agriculture class was to find a gene of interest, and then based on the restriction sites for the gene, insert it into 2 vectors. Throughout this process we had to create our primers in such a way that we would order them from a company. Primers are necessary during the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) process. Basically this homework summed up what I did on my internship this summer so it was kind of neat being able to apply it to something different than within lab.
The other exciting things this week were the concerts I attended. Wednesday night, Howie Day came to perform @ Wilson Hall on campus. His show was incredible. I have never seen a performer record his music directly on stage and rerecord on top of it so that it would sound like there was an entire band. It was unbelievable. Then last night one of my favorite groups, Virginia Coalition (VACO) was playing at a bar off campus. Their show was AMAZING. They played till 1 A.M. because after they were finished playing their set list they just kept playing the songs that the audience was requesting. I was so excited when they played my favorite song, “Hurricane.” I took a ton of pictures at the concerts which I will be sure to post on the website after I upload them on my computer
As for today, I have a quiz in my Epidemiology class, which I have to start studying for this morning because I didn’t have time at all throughout the week. Hopefully it won’t be that bad. After my class, a colonel from USAMRIID is coming down to our Biotech Lab to look at where we conducted all of our research this summer as well as to take some pictures of us working in the lab for a publication. So that is going to be really cool. After that meeting I have another meeting with Nicole, my lab partner from the summer. During this meeting we plan to start writing our senior thesis paper so that we do not have to worry about it during second semester of senior year. Well I should be going so that I have time to study for my quiz. I’ll be sure to post pictures from the concerts next week!.. Hope everyone enjoys the weekend.!
Posted by Kristen on October 7, 2005 10:13 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Course Work Starts to Intensify
Hey everyone! I have to apologize for not updating my blog in a while. I was a little busier than I thought I was. Since last Monday, I got my exam grade back from Medical Biotech, and I did surprisingly well. My final grade was a 93, so that was very exciting since I put so much time and energy into studying for it.
Classes are going ok so far. This week I have 2 huge papers due, one on Wednesday and the other on Thursday. On Wednesday my paper is for my GENG 248 class comparing a story that we’ve read in class to another story that we have not covered. My second paper is a little more challenging. It’s for my Health Administration class (HAS 358) and what we had to do is read over a case study about issues and problems occurring in a hospital. Then we have to take the position as a consultant and write a memorandum expressing our ideas and possible solutions. I’m trying to finish this paper within the next day or so. The reason for this is on Wednesday night, Howie Day is coming to perform at JMU and I got a ticket. I’m so excited for this show because I heard he played here my freshman year and was amazing. On Thursday night another one of my favorite bands is coming and playing at a bar off campus (The Pub) and I am so excited to see them. The group is known as Virginia Coalition (VACO) and they are absolutely amazing to see in concert. I highly recommend seeing them if you ever get a chance. Hopefully by the end of this week I will get some really cool pictures from the concert to show you. I’m really hoping to get these papers done before the concerts so that I can enjoy myself and not have to worry about getting home early to finish them up.
Last week, my lab partner from the summer and I got together to start planning out our senior thesis. Our goal is to finish our rough draft of the paper by December. If we are able to accomplish that, then second semester of senior year will be amazing and stress-free. So hopefully all works out as planned and we are able to accomplish this. Another exciting thing that I found out from my advisor, Dr. Raab, is that the Army would like to interview me as well as a few other students about our lab experience over the summer which is really awesome. Representatives from the Army will be coming to JMU on Friday to take a few pictures for some publications as well as see where we have been conducting all our work in purifying proteins.
Tonight I went to JMU’s University Recreation Center, better known to the JMU students as UREC. One of my best guy friend’s here at JMU had been playing racquetball for the past 3 years. Up till today I have only beat him once, but that all changed tonight when I finally won my second game. The thing about us when we play is that we both put as much effort as possible into our games. Never once does anybody win because the other didn’t bring their full game! So this was a very exciting night for me!
So, as you can see, this past week has been very exciting for me, and next week is only going to be busier. But just like years past, no matter how much work you get, if you put the necessary amount of time into it, then the job will get done. If you have any questions about JMU, or the work load for ISAT just email me and let me know!
Posted by Kristen on October 4, 2005 11:24 AM | Link | Email Kristen
