It’s going to be a busy semester

Somehow,  I had arranged the semester to be fairly light allowing me to work on my research. I was only signed up for one class, the work of which parallelled the work I have to do for my degree, namely write up a dissertation project proposal. On top of that, I was slated to teach one lab section, so overall my class and teaching load would be light. Funny how things actually work out. I am taking 3 classes, though one not for credit, and teaching two sections of lab. 314 lab isn’t really that bad, it’s all computer-based, but the extra time committment and grading will be a minor annoyance. The bioinformatics class will be fast-paced and full of work, but I should come out of it with the basic tools to analyze  gene expression and sequencing data that will surely be a part of my dissertation. And Quantitative Genetics is just something that I need a firm background in since we are primarily a quantitative genetics lab. So all of that, topped with a research proposal and a manuscript of the selection data I presneted last week, and I’ve got a busy semester ahead of me.

So much for having a breather.

Similar Posts

  • Merry Holidays!

    I had a good Christmas this year. It began with a week of continuous snow fall. We’d have 3-6 inches here and there with warm days compacting the wet and heavy accumulation. But all of that still adds up so that by the time Christmas rolled around, the snow was over a foot deep in parts of our yard. Meanwhile the mountains have been getting hammered. Moscow Mountain has over 40 inches in the upper elevations, Brundage has over 90 inches at the summit, and I’m not sure of the current depths at Freezeout and Lolo Pass as the snotels…

  • Why you’re working from home, Part 2: A Shiny Model

    Immediately after I published my last post, I wasn’t content with the manner in which I conveyed the SIR model. Simply posting graphs from scenarios that I ran isn’t exciting. It’s passive, and it doesn’t actively demonstrate for the reader how social distancing does work to reduce infection rates. I wanted something interactive. Something that you, my readers, can play with. So I built the model in Shiny. Shiny is a tool for R that makes data visualization interactive. I had never used Shiny. But with a few hours of reading the introductory tutorial, I had my own custom application…

  • Backpacking: Granite Lake

    When I first moved to Idaho, I would study Google Earth to look for places to explore. The Cabinet Mountains across the border in Montana stood out with its high peaks and alpine lakes. The largest of these is Granite Lake and it sits beneath one of the highest peaks in the range. I never did make it during my grad school tenure. So when we decided to go out for one last trek this year, I pitched this, and the next thing I know, we were on the road headed toward Libby to get to the trailhead. On paper,…

  • I wish I had my Camera with me

    One of the properties of Moscow is a wet winter and spring. We’re close enough to the coast to get the rainy weather patterns, yet far enough inland to incur the effects of the Cascades rain shadow. Though I suppose being at the foothills of the next major mountain divide, it’s only natural for the moisture to build up and then drop before passing into Montana. The rain here is more of a constant drizzle than the short, hard rains we’d get in the summer in the Appalachians. The drizzle will last all day. It’s the sort of grey rain…

  • Puppies for Sale

    The puppies are now over 8 weeks old and oh so cute. As you can imagine, seven growing pups indoors can create quite a mess that is hard to keep on top of. On top of that, any time you step into their room, they all mob you for attention. So, as spring weather has descended upon the Palouse, we found scrap lumber and fencing and built an outdoor playpen for the dogs. So far it is doing the job. It’s also giving the pups some much needed fresh air and sunshine, which in turn tires them out so all…

  • The Joy of Home Ownership: Adventures in Plumbing

    When we moved to Moscow, we knew we’d be here for more than five years and that buying our own place would probably benefit us more in the long run than renting. There are many advantages to owning your own home. The most obvious is that your monthly payments go toward something tangible. When you pay rent on an appartment, all you get back is a place to live for the month. With a mortgage payment, you’re that much closer to actually owning the place you live in, which means when you move out, you can get that money back…