Archive for the 'school' Tag

Air Motor-licious

I recently completed the project for ME12S, the Machining class I’ve been taking: an Air Motor (photos of mine). The class has really rekindled my love for making things with my hands, and I’m racking my brain for more fun things I could find an excuse to build. (continued)

Resume / portfolio Optimization

I’ve been working on my Curriculum Vitae, in preparation for the launch of AndrewJBonham.com. It’s very much still a work in progress, but I wanted to have a “professional” site to advertise myself. Then, when I’m applying for jobs, I can reference it, and if I do a little SEO (search engine optimization), it’ll be near the top when potential employers google for information on me. All good, except that I feel like my C-V is pretty blah right now (and I need to make a resume, too!).

So, I’m curious– what have you done to put some razzle-dazzle into your C-V or resume? (continued)

How Would You Revise the General Curriculum?

Recently at work, I’ve had a lot of data files to go through– The instrument I’m using spits out data as a series of (hundreds of…) text files, each with about eighty pieces of data. Rather than go through that by hand, I sat down and wrote a little script to collate the data for me into one, organized file. A co-worker was amazed by this– which got me thinking: There’s only going to be more computers in the future. Should at least a little bit of programming be a required subject in school? What else could be revised?
(continued)

Candidacy Exam Anticipation… Forever!

As a warning, this is going to be a bit of a whining post, but I really want to get it out. I’m in a molecular biology PhD program and in my specific program I have to write an approximately 20 page proposal on a topic (completely unrelated to the topic I’m actually studying in my lab) and then defend it in front of four established professors in my department (usually in a 3+ hours meeting with only white boards as props) in order to advance to candidacy. I’m at the stage where I submitted my proposal, have done a mock defense, and am now just waiting for the thing to be scheduled (professors are busy!)… it’s now been over 3 weeks since I submitted it and there’s no date picked.
(continued)

First author Andrew!

I know it’s been a long time since Andrew posted here, so I thought I’d take the initiative and post the news that Andrew is now a First Author on a paper just accepted by JACS!! A happy upturn in the horse latitudes of research!

edit: Detection of Sequence-Specific Protein-DNA Interactions via Surface Enhanced Resonance Raman Scattering

Candidacy Exam

I just wanted to post a brief update, and maybe a call for well-wishing. My Exam for Advancement to PhD Candidacy (a.k.a. the Candidacy Exam) is this Friday at 3 pm. It’s kind of strange. On one hand, it’s probably the biggest, most important (and final) test I’ll ever take. On the other hand, it’s on stuff that I work with everyday and with which I’m very familiar. But I think I’m ready… but I wouldn’t mind it at all if you all kept me in your thoughts on Friday.

Four to Six Hour Workdays… the key to happiness?

That’s what this article claims, in any case. I tend to agree, being the meditative and leisurely guy that I am. What I found most interesting, though, was the throwaway line about the economist Keynes. Apparantly, he recommended shorter workdays as well… I may need to track this down.

No real story here, other than a mildly interesting article and my obsessive-compulsive nature.

I’m in the wrong field or I’m sane or both

A while back, a co-worker of mine posted an editorial they had clipped from Nature, which was the advice of an experienced researcher to potential graduate students in the sciences titled “What makes a good graduate student?”.

Now, either I’m a textbook example of a piss-poor graduate student, or the author is an elitist crazy and I’m sane. Read on to see snippets of her “advice”, and my incredulity and disbelief. (continued)

Rantback: Juicy Morsels

Welcome to the first Rantback , which consolidates lots of little thoughts into one post. In this issue: Feminine form in video games, Cancer, Pets, and Teaching. (continued)

I Passed My Oral Defense!

The title pretty much says it all– after 2.5 hours of being grilled and proposing new experiments, I was told to wait outside for the ten longest minutes of my life, and when I returned I was notified that I had a Complete Pass (no further writing or anything.. completely done). Hell Yes!