First semester in Graduate school is behind

It is done. First semester. First time I ever saw a SWAT team. And spent painful four hours trapped in a hotel. And I thought lightning never strikes twice in the same place. The scars of May 16th are still too fresh and first thoughts people had were seriously "not again" when alert systems announced shots being fired.... It is kind of sad how well the whole school was prepared to face this. Even the students had a memorial fund for the killed police officers family up and running the same day. Exams were okay even if conveniently there was that shooting incident just day before they started.

Americans are very fond of multiple choice questions in exams. And do not be fooled. They are darn hard. With four to six choices for each question and each of them very detail oriented. I miss essays a bit. But the exams went well. And to my knowledge also the writing assignments were not a total disaster either. All in all, now I have a better understanding of how Virginia Tech gets its academic reputation. The amount of truly passionate researchers on all levels of the totem pole is just amazing. This is now my academic home. 

On a lighter note....I am visiting Alaska for the holidays. Me and my stack of research articles and immunology reading material.... Now this I would call mountainous area. Eagles flying around and all that fresh air would make anyone want to move here. But few days in constant rain and that nonsense is gone out of your mind. At least until the next sunny day. Darn the fish is good and fresh here. And no need to sell your soul for a decent piece of salmon.

Hoping this restful holiday will lead to a very productive semester on the research front!

Luxurious week ahead!

As Thanksgiving is closing up, the hardest four weeks thus far academically are over and week of no classes is ahead. It turns out your standards for luxury lower drastically after entering graduate school. Here are some luxuries that will make me happy during next week of down time:

1. Getting over 5 hours of sleep per night. (On a side note: lack of sleep really affects your memory. And this is why I will never have children. I would go insane with the lack of sleep.)
2. Finding time to go to the grocery store every week instead of twice a month.
3. Looking at your schedule and seeing that there are no insane spurts between buildings to get to class next semester. (I am hoping for this, fingers crossed)
4. Looking in the fridge and seeing that there is real food instead of stuff scavenged from on campus scientific meeting
5. Realizing there is no need to run for the bus since it is not leaving that early on holiday schedule
6. Going to a store that sells a good variety of products that are not food. Walmart, here I come!
7. Visiting the bank and post office like normal people instead of trying to find a way to do everything online as those places close when you are still normally in class.
8. Reading the magazines that have arrived to the house during the past month with out skipping paragraphs (even if they are bio technique magazines and commercials for food).

Alas....this is not a vacation week by any means. I still need to write one huge paper and four short ones. And prepare for finals. It is really true that graduate school in US is rough. Even if you are aware of it, nothing prepares you for the true impact. Luckily you are not the only one in this situation. When complaining about the lack of sleep and other time management issues you can see people nodding, "yes that is how we feel too".

Getting excited about science!

While reading an article for journal club presentation I found a new scientific lover in the form of biofilms and their structures, functions, and effects to everyday life. This has happened to me before, but every time it is like falling in love again and again. You want to know all about the object of affection (stalk your crush on Facebook) and spend all your time with them. 

Science works in same ways to an extent. You feel the need to do multiple internet searches on the topic. PubMed (search engine for scientific publications) suddenly becomes your most visited site. You spend hours better spent sleeping looking for new articles, pictures, statistics and research groups specializing in the topic. If you are lucky and get to actually do some research relating to this topic, you end up spending the incubation times (basically just waiting time) admiring the research material be it a culture of bacteria or theoretical model on computer. (Although one hopes that there is no need to cuddle with the research object unless it is a kitten).

This is probably one reason some scientists seem so weird to others. They are in their own world. And as true lovers of their topic they can't stop talking about the object of their affection. Everyone has had some form of obsessions as children. This is where the level of interest probably stems from. I will use myself as an example to point out the diversity of interests and that even scientist are just normal people with their intense obsessions. They just managed to make a career out of it.

Age 6-12:

Dinosaurs. The best thing ever! I still have a soft spot for prehistoric archeology due to this. It was very common interest for kids due to a movie called Jurassic park. They were large and varied in shape and habits and colors! Just like fairytale creatures, but with the added bonus of them actually being real!  The first story I independently read was a short paragraph depicting tyrannosaurus Rex in a encyclopedia for kids. I am eternally grateful for my parents for taking me to several dinosaur related exhibitions. This must have been very boring to them.

Age 10-11:

Space. I had a little notebook filled with notes on planets and stars. Sadly I did not have a telescope at the time. This topic was short lived though as there was a very limited amount of information I could understand at the time from books.

Age 11-16:

Art. Creating own paintings and studying artists was a hobby for a long time. True artistic talent was not observed at any point. But still my mother got me all needed supplies and even took me once a week to art club for kids. 

Age 10-12:

Egyptology. My interest in the era was rather intense. Books on this topic had lots of pictures and there was even a written language that was based on little pictures. Mysteries, politics, stories, curses and especially the peculiar way to store dead people was fascinating. My mother indulged me by taking me to another city to see an international visiting Egyptology exhibition. Culmination of this interest led me to read a book probably not suitable for a 12-year-old. A huge tome called Sinuhe the Egyptian written by Mika Waltari depicting life of an imaginary person called Sinuhe in Egypt in time of Pharaohs.

Age 14-17: 

Plants as experimental organisms. This was a thing for every summer made possible by my fathers farming profession. I could get my hands on seeds actually used for food production and get advice for making them grow for experiments. I learned a lot about experimental design by making tons of mistakes. I obsessively recorded results on the poor plants watered with soap water and constructed a small chart of the results as my last plant related experiment.

Age 17-19: 

Genetics and inheritable diseases. High school was a good time to get into some more serious topics. Looking at traits I have against the traits in my immediate family built on junior high and high school information that I found very narrow, with only animal and plant experiments introduced in any depth. I had the chance to get deeper into it in the form of a project in high school that took me via interviews to study the hereditary diseases in my family tree. All the encouragement from my family and relatives went far in obtaining information for the study. 

First taste of Graduate School at Virginia Tech

Differences between Virginia Tech and the Finnish university system are actually striking. The first week before classes reading assignments were already given. And yes, you actually read the book instead of the notes.  It was stressed that a lot is expected from students from day one. And they actually have great confidence that students will rise to the occasion.

The university has a honor code that has to be followed at all times. It entails academic integrity and overall moral rules to be followed by all students and staff. It is enforced by a student body based honor court, which handles all cases of suspected cheating and other actions breaking the code like plagiarism. This is unheard of in Finnish university system, although plagiarism has been scanned and there is a moral code followed.

The situation on graduate students is similar to Finnish system. We are part of the staff and student body, as we have teaching obligations and course requirements. However we are not thrown to the wolves in teaching front. There was a two day course for new graduate teaching assistants before classes started and followup classes involving teaching in academia through out the semester. This ensures better starting point for teaching. This has started to emerge in Finland too, due to its obvious benefits.

The extra source of stress for graduate students at Virginia Tech is to remain in good academic standing. This in practice means keeping at least B average (3 out of 4 on scale 1-4). This is a challenge due to courses being very demanding and research work being pushed on top of it. This is why time management is considered to be the most challenging part of graduate school.

The time management part is certainly proving to be an every day challenge with multiple assignments and exam dates piling up. The day I have to think of what to do is still to come. Graduate school is not only about demands on you though. It has already given me the chance to learn from amazing people on top of their fields. This includes the legendary Noel Krieg, one of the editors for Bergey's Manual of Systemic Bacteriology (and he has a bacterial species named after him). I am challenged constantly to do better and think faster and dig deeper. Encouragement and feedback are part of the teaching here all the time and it makes a huge difference in motivating me.

In words of Dr. McNabb: "You get out of this what you put into it". And I am planning to give this all I can.

How to get to a graduate school in US

For me the first hurdle was to decide where I want to study. And I mean really, really WANT to study. "I want to live in New York" is not a good enough reason. This has to matter. You have to want it more than children (given that you want children at all), more than you want a comfy retirement (which you might not get), more than you want  to become a millionare (which you will definately not become anytime soon if you go to grad school). This is no backup plan. This is the wet dream of your academic mind.

One of the early steps in application process is to ensure good recommendations. My recommendations came from internships and work in US, Australia and Finland during the span of 4 years. Second thing is getting english proficiency test taken and aced. And reviewing excessively snobbish vocabulary for GRE (graduate record examination) with a side of math without calculator. Essays are also important. You sell your self to graduate school. Your pimp is not going to do it for you. Getting an interview is awesome. I prepared for it thoroughly. My interview was actually nice. The questions were not hard and they actually answered some of my questions about the school and program.

The e-mail I cheris for long time to come arrived a few days later. "YAY! I got in! To Virginia Tech!" This euphoria lasted for a day. Then I took a look at VISA requirements. Being married at this point is not a benefit. A month of stressing out and going through immigration law, VISA laws and personal assets should earn me a minor in immigration law. If I had wanted to study law, I would have gone to a damn law school. All is well that ends well. The VISA interview was fine. The thick stack of paper, trip to Helsinki (15 hours in train) and the two relatively large payments to cover necessary fees (MRV-fee and SEVIS-fee) did not go to waste. There is still no air-con at the waiting room of US consular office, but there you go. You can suffocate and melt in safety behind the armed guards.

Tie up all loose ends in home country....easier said than done since everything is closed for the summer. I am at the moment loosing my mind over vaccination records.