Thursday, July 22, 2010

brain fart

The good thing about a lab job is that you get hour long breaks in the middle of your experiments while chemistry is slowing doing its own job. Yeah, now is just one of those breaks when I sit around and ponder about what to do for the next two hours before starting the next part of the procedure. I really need to find something productive to do for these occasions. I figured I should start writing more. Yesterday, I was trying to write an email to a professor about working in his lab next semester and for half an hour I couldn't even start the opening sentence, so I started writing in bullet point format. After a ridiculously long time of brainstorming here's what I have:

-will be sophomore bio major, wants to know if you have any openings for lab aide/research assistant
-interested in neurobiology. reason: always been interested in general biology, but ever since taking brain/behavior with Behrmann, gained interest in the workings of the brain
-has experience with animals, can dose, take blood samples, collect tissues
-has experience with procedures such IHC, ELISA, Western Blot, PCR, gel electro., cell culture, general lab safety...
-would like to work in your lab because: wants to pursue undergrad research, you have interesting research/publications, wants to gain experience with the technologies in your lab ie. multi photon imaging, single neuron electrical recording blah blah

It started sounding like an amateur resume. What's worse is that I can't even turn this bulk of crap writing into complete sentences. It's like I don't even know how to speak English anymore. In all honesty, I think I was smarter back in 5th grade because back then at least I knew how to write complete sentences. So... time to do some psychoanalysis on myself and figure out what the hell is wrong with me. I have a couple of theories.

1. Colorguard: I joined colorguard ever since middle school and have hit myself on the head for God knows many times. If only back then I knew I was committing brain cell genocide each time the flag lands on my head I would have quit a long time ago.

2. I don't do enough crossword puzzles: Here's an interesting insight from the article "Do You Get Dumber As You Grow Older," "The most powerful youthing formula is doing mental exercises. Studies have shown that those seniors who play chess, card games, solve puzzles, or pursue an interesting hobby, not only have a great attitude, but they are also biologically younger than others of the same chronological age." Based on past experiences I think this is very true. In high school, we had a school newspaper that featured a new crossword puzzle everyday and some of my friends would always do those during free periods. I've tried to do those occasionally but I was always the idiot who could only figure out 10% of the puzzle at best. Then there are those geniuses who could complete all the puzzles in less an half an hour, even the impossible Friday ones. Of course, those are the people who eventually ended up in Harvard/MIT.

3. Korean drama: So far two people have tried to convince me that watching Korean dramas stimulates brain cell apoptosis. Ops.

4. Genetics: I probably have a dormant "stupidity" gene that gets expressed after a certain age... or could be a "stupidity" virus, sort of like AIDS you know? Or early onset Alzheimers...

5. Anti-Asianess: If genetics isn't the cause, maybe culture can explain it. There's the stereotype that Asians are raised under pressure to focus more on academics hence with an adequate amount of test preparations and honor level English courses they are generally better at reading and writing. My parents didn't raised me in that way. Sure they may fit the Asian stereotype themselves and they have high expectations for me in terms of academics but they never did much to enforce that so I was pretty much dependent on self-motivation (and I don't have much of that :P).

6. Laziness: tying into number 5.... this is the most probable reason (though #1 and 2 are fairly likely also) aka I need to read and write more!

2 comments:

  1. Heh, yeah. Writing is such a blehhh activity. I think we're just more worried about the end result and the receiving person's perception of our writing now, than we were before. We're just self-conscious writers. =O

    Heh, Asians don't really promote English much. It's nice if you take AP English, but it means nothing if you're not doing calculus and physics and chemistry at the same time. :P

    You should do KenKen every day! Like I did, but I stopped... and then I stopped concentrating as well! lol

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  2. true, i think now i'm more self-conscious AND out of practice. :\

    oh i was thinking more of the asian-parents-emphasize-strong-work ethnics rather than English. :P

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