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Guest Message © 2013 DevFuse




Lazy Day Afternoon

Posted by aberrant, in Life, Grad School App 21 January 2012 · 137 views

Instead of updating this week summary on my previous entry (regarding my post-submission life), I decided to write a brand new entry to dedicate my first interview after a multiple rejections streak, after watching how Bolton murdered Liverpool 3:1.

Why Lazy Day Afternoon? Because this is actually what my life is now. Free of fear, free of paranoid, I can literally be lazy for a bit. My periodic-press-F5 symptom is gone since I got an e-mail on Wednesday morning for an invitation to visit this campus. I maybe exaggerated a bit, but the thoughts of reapplying grad school in Fall 2012, retaking GRE (both general and subject test) later this year, and going back to my home country are temporarily faded away. I can return to my lazy lifestyle that I enjoy thus far - (again,) sitting in 2 graduate classes two days a week without any stress on completing homework assignments or studying for the exams; shooting some hoops during a break between these two classes; watching soccer games in the morning and NBA in the evening, and playing my favorite simulation computer game when I am home. Who else can be lazier than myself? "Man, don't you have to work in your lab or something?" Thanks to the international office at my school, they screwed me from working in this lab that I wanted to work in. By the time that I know I was not allow to work in that lab due to my status (on employment regulations), it was too late to find another lab, work with a new PI, and try to show him/her that I can excel in my field of interested and deserve a recommendation letter from this person.

What can I say? I am an undergraduate, who has not graduated yet; I am not taking any classes at this moment, in this term; I learn better without any stress or maintaining my academic performance. I am aberrant. :ph34r:

ps. it has been a while since I have updated my mental jukebox and therefore, I got this Evanescence self-entitled album and looped it whenever I could, for 3 days.




Can't you volunteer in the lab?
i'm glad that you ask :) answer is can and cannot. back in Fall term I could have find a new lab and volunteer/work after I got this notification (that I cannot work in this lab in this institution because of VISA problem) back in end-October, but it was kind of late to find another place to volunteer. Reasons for that are:

1. I was taking two labs (a physical chemistry lab and a biochemistry lab)
2. the earliest deadline that I have had for my applications was Dec 1. It is quite difficult for me to convince a new PI that I can learn new things (topics and experimental technique(s)) and ultimately write me a strong letter of recommendation letter in just ~1.25 months as a part-time student.

I guess my learning curve is only decent. Without any biology background, it took me a month (>20 hrs/week) to learn most of the common experimental settings (and people) in my former lab inside out, before I started working on my own project from scratch. therefore I decided to focus on my coursework instead.

as for now, because i'm not a student but a traveler, therefore I cannot volunteer in a lab. :)

May 2013

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