When Gina Tries to be Informative and it Ends Up Being Boring

I realize my last blog post was not at all informative about my college life, and I decided this post should make up for it a bit. Unfortunately, I have a quiz tomorrow (for which I should be studying) and have decided to write a post instead. Therefore, in order to feel slightly productive, this post will contain a few things you may not have been expecting and have no particular need to read: all twenty amino acids including their 3-letter codes and their 1-letter codes, the Michaelis-Menten derivation, and anything else I decide to jot down.

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The parts you can ignore will be bracketed like this.
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I am going to Dublin! I have apparently forgotten to mention this to some people, so it needed to be said. I’m going with the orchestra January 11-18, and we will be playing Tchaik 5. (Really, though, who cares what we’re playing? Excuse for travel=awesomeness!)

On a somewhat related note, I am not currently playing in orchestra. Some of the wind players are doing a rotation system, and for the rest of the semester I am in wind ensemble. This sucks. Wind ensemble is not really a good venue for the bassoon. There are too many excessively loud instruments, so basically the only thing I’m ever told is “I could use about three times as much of you there” when increasing volume even slightly sacrifices tone. The fact that I am even bothered by sacrificing tone also makes me not fit in with the majority of the players in the group. They are used to playing “new music” which to me translates to “the modern interpretation of classical music where weirdness is valued over tone, pitch, and anything that actually sounds pleasant.” A director should never say, “you’re not trying to sound nice here.” You should always be trying to sound nice, otherwise why play? In short: the music is in general easy (read: boring), unpleasant, and since I cannot be heard I may as well not even be there.

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The Amino Acids

Alanine Ala A
Arginine Arg R
Asparagine Asn N
Aspartic Acid Asp D
Cysteine Cys C
Glutamine Gln Q
Glutamic Acid Glu E
Glycine Gly G
Histidine His H
Isoleucine Ile I
Leucine Leu L
Lycine Lyc K
Methionine Met M
Phenylalanine Phe F
Proline Pro P
Serine Ser S
Threonine Thr T
Tryptophan Trp W
Tyrosine Tyr Y
Valine Val V

I GOT 100% ON MY DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS PRELIM! AAAAHHHHHH YEAH! *Dances* I don’t really have much to add to that. I am math god hear me roar.

I GOT AN 86 ON MY P-CHEM PRELIM! AAAAAHHHHHHHH YEAH! *Dances* This is super exciting since P-Chem exams tend to have means in the 50s (or lower. I’m not sure what the mean on this test actually was, but P-Chem has notoriously low means.) It’s also really exciting because I studied really really hard for this test and it paid off. Apparently, I “understand” some quantum mechanics. (If you’ve ever studied any quantum mechanics you know why that is in quotes.)

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The Michaelis-Menten Derivation
will not show up here due to formatting! But here are the assumptions:

Steady-State Approximation, Well-Mixed Assumption, and the time rate of the enzyme-substrate compound is zero.

This past weekend was fall break, which gave me an excuse to cook delicious things and not leave my building for three days. I made chicken Cordon Bleu, broccoli, roasted potatoes, sweet potato fries, legit mac ‘n’ cheese, an omelet, a crepe, a PB&J, popcorn, and lots of tea. Fall break also gave me the chance to get quite a bit of work done and also watch quite a bit of TV. It ended up being in the upper seventies all weekend, and if I had felt inclined to go outside I’m sure it would have been lovely. (I know how lame that sounds. Honestly I am the world’s biggest homebody. When people complain about the weather, I’m like “why don’t you just not go out in it…?”)

I’m kind of out of things to say. The first round of prelims is over now, but I’ve spent the last three weeks just studying and doing homework. I am down to 7 states, and have been for a while, for license plate bingo. (Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee) I hope your first few weeks of school have been fantastic! And remember: gram-negative cells have a double-layer cell wall composed of 30% lipids!