Academia Ghetto Thread

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Here's a few pictures of the campus I'm going to: 

Since it's up in Oro Valley, they've made sure to put pretty plants and rocks next to the road and all around the place, all perfectly just so and "wild" looking.

Hey I taught two semesters of chemistry at that campus many years ago. It was my first time as an adjunct.

Ooooh, is this back when adjunct professors still made enough to keep them above the poverty line??

Not really. $3.2k for 4 credits. It was good work experience and they were organized about it. But it was weird being 1 of 10-20 adjuncts in a department with only 2 full time faculty.

But I don't know how long ago it was, or how much time 4 credits is worth in your university system. If you're talking the equivalent of Oregon in 1971, that's a pretty tidy sum.

It was about 7 years ago. It wasn't great pay but it helped keep the family comfortable. Four credits were for a typical lecture+laboratory 15-week course. I taught second semester gen. chem. there and most of the students were hoping to transfer the credit to a 4 year degree. I gather you're in a 10-week system?

Good luck with your paperwork!

Yes, quarter system. I hate quarters. A 4-credit course is your typical undergraduate lecture course, genchem is 5 credits with lab, ochem is 6 credits with lab.

Paperwork will be fine, just irritating. Thanks!

[Zenpatista]

Here's a few pictures of the campus I'm going to: 

Since it's up in Oro Valley, they've made sure to put pretty plants and rocks next to the road and all around the place, all perfectly just so and "wild" looking.

Hey I taught two semesters of chemistry at that campus many years ago. It was my first time as an adjunct.

Ooooh, is this back when adjunct professors still made enough to keep them above the poverty line??

Not really. $3.2k for 4 credits. It was good work experience and they were organized about it. But it was weird being 1 of 10-20 adjuncts in a department with only 2 full time faculty.

But I don't know how long ago it was, or how much time 4 credits is worth in your university system. If you're talking the equivalent of Oregon in 1971, that's a pretty tidy sum.

It was about 7 years ago. It wasn't great pay but it helped keep the family comfortable. Four credits were for a typical lecture+laboratory 15-week course. I taught second semester gen. chem. there and most of the students were hoping to transfer the credit to a 4 year degree. I gather you're in a 10-week system?

Good luck with your paperwork!

Yes, quarter system. I hate quarters. A 4-credit course is your typical undergraduate lecture course, genchem is 5 credits with lab, ochem is 6 credits with lab.

Paperwork will be fine, just irritating. Thanks!

Were you ever in the semester system? I had to figure out quarters when I moved to CA for schooling. It took me a while to get used to it. I think I like the semesters better.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Here's a few pictures of the campus I'm going to: 

Since it's up in Oro Valley, they've made sure to put pretty plants and rocks next to the road and all around the place, all perfectly just so and "wild" looking.

Hey I taught two semesters of chemistry at that campus many years ago. It was my first time as an adjunct.

Ooooh, is this back when adjunct professors still made enough to keep them above the poverty line??

Not really. $3.2k for 4 credits. It was good work experience and they were organized about it. But it was weird being 1 of 10-20 adjuncts in a department with only 2 full time faculty.

But I don't know how long ago it was, or how much time 4 credits is worth in your university system. If you're talking the equivalent of Oregon in 1971, that's a pretty tidy sum.

It was about 7 years ago. It wasn't great pay but it helped keep the family comfortable. Four credits were for a typical lecture+laboratory 15-week course. I taught second semester gen. chem. there and most of the students were hoping to transfer the credit to a 4 year degree. I gather you're in a 10-week system?

Good luck with your paperwork!

Yes, quarter system. I hate quarters. A 4-credit course is your typical undergraduate lecture course, genchem is 5 credits with lab, ochem is 6 credits with lab.

Paperwork will be fine, just irritating. Thanks!

Were you ever in the semester system? I had to figure out quarters when I moved to CA for schooling. It took me a while to get used to it. I think I like the semesters better.

Nope. I just can't seem to help noticing that all the textbooks are written for semesters, which means that we typically rush through them while glossing over some stuff and leaving other things out entirely (insert running joke about skipping chapter 9).

It tends to work fine for any classes that are taught as full-year sequences, because 3 quarters is the same as two semesters. But for ANYTHING ELSE it sucks ass. Molecular bio was nightmarish.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Argh I need to do many things! So many things! Sigh.

[Cain]

Final essay for May 8th.  Fortunately, I have some time off coming up, and it's not a long one, and its on a topic dear to my heart (far-right terrorism).

And then, assuming I get the score I want, the dissertation.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Final essay for May 8th.  Fortunately, I have some time off coming up, and it's not a long one, and its on a topic dear to my heart (far-right terrorism).

And then, assuming I get the score I want, the dissertation.

SWEEET.

I, too, have an essay due May 8. Which I should really start work on sometime this week.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Today I applied for a program that, if I get in, will make me eligible for funding that would pay me a wage for the time I spend in the lab working on my neurogenesis project, which would be awesome because that would make me that much more likely to have a publishable paper by the end of next year.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Today I applied for a program that, if I get in, will make me eligible for funding that would pay me a wage for the time I spend in the lab working on my neurogenesis project, which would be awesome because that would make me that much more likely to have a publishable paper by the end of next year.

Nice! I hope you get it!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thank you! I think my chances are good. I also think I might accidentally have gotten roped into a project with the Cognitive Neuroscience professor, which isn't exactly bad but I don't know if I really have time for it. I'm really interested in the history of Nissl staining and how this method, which first enabled us to visualize the Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum over a hundred years ago, is still vital to labs using the most state-of-the-art methods imaginable when they're imaging tissues. It's incredible. But that doesn't necessarily mean I should give a presentation on it.

Nonetheless, Franz Nissl was also a bit of a prankster. I'm glad his legacy lives on.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm studying for tomorrow's midterm and typing up my notes from class. I don't know if I've mentioned how much I love endoplasmic reticulum and the whole ribosome thing, really.

So a little ribosome is chugging along out in the cytoplasm, and it finds a bit of RNA so it latches on and starts cranking out a protein, and at the N-terminus of that protein, there's a signal sequence that says it's meant for the rough endoplasmic reticulum. Just as the protein starts snaking out of the ribosome, a signal recognition particle comes up behind it and gives it a little cuddle

a creepy little cuddle

saying "Shhhh baby, don't do that. Not here. Not now" and puts its hand over the extrusion site for the protein.

And then they just wait like that in a silent embrace, floating in the cytoplasm, until diffusion takes them to the rough endoplasmic reticulum, where a signal recognition particle receptor binds them and the signal recognition particle shoves the ribosome onto a translocator and says "Do it there!" and then the ribosome finishes pooping the protein directly into the rough endoplasmic reticulum.

[LMNO]

I want to learn biology the Nigel way. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Maybe later in my career I will start writing textbooks.

[Freeky]

If you kill his parents, you can adopt him.

And then Fus Ro Dah him off a cliff.

oh my god thats amazing and i have to try it.

[Freeky]

I'm studying for tomorrow's midterm and typing up my notes from class. I don't know if I've mentioned how much I love endoplasmic reticulum and the whole ribosome thing, really.

So a little ribosome is chugging along out in the cytoplasm, and it finds a bit of RNA so it latches on and starts cranking out a protein, and at the N-terminus of that protein, there's a signal sequence that says it's meant for the rough endoplasmic reticulum. Just as the protein starts snaking out of the ribosome, a signal recognition particle comes up behind it and gives it a little cuddle

a creepy little cuddle

saying "Shhhh baby, don't do that. Not here. Not now" and puts its hand over the extrusion site for the protein.

And then they just wait like that in a silent embrace, floating in the cytoplasm, until diffusion takes them to the rough endoplasmic reticulum, where a signal recognition particle receptor binds them and the signal recognition particle shoves the ribosome onto a translocator and says "Do it there!" and then the ribosome finishes pooping the protein directly into the rough endoplasmic reticulum.

That's the most hilarious and disturbing way I've heard cellular processes described.  Ever.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So for some reason for next week my cognitive neuroscience professor decided that it was a completely good idea to assign one chapter, six papers, and a 40-minute Youtube video to us.

I'm not talking about nice tidy little 14-page papers, either. http://jn.physiology.org/content/106/3/1125

That's just a goddamn dick move.