Now that it's over... (Matt Grobis)

Now what? haha. Summer vacation is lovely... get up when you want, sleep how much you want, no work, just fun... interestingly enough, I'm glad this will only last about a week. It's nice to get out the Xbox and play games I haven't played in months, sleep 9-10 hours a day, and not have the stress of always having to do something on my mind, but I can't help but feel like I should be doing something... more. I suppose in the end it really is all about balance; in the midst of paper-writing and studying for finals last week, I gladly welcomed days with absolutely nothing on the planner. Now, though, once I've blown up a good share of mutated monsters' heads in Fallout 3 I can't help but desire some sort of structure to my days.

Like I said, though, things are good. I'm leaving for South Africa this Thursday and I'll be there for three weeks. It's a program through U of I about wildlife conservation and management along with learning about the various ecosystems in the region. We'll mainly be in national parks and the last six days or so will be spent hiking and camping... very excited for that. Apparently the trip starts with looking at animals through bars (in an animal rescue center, for example), then looking at them through the Jeep windows, and then seeing them while actually walking around. There's something called the "titanic seat" on the Jeep, which is a seat at the very front of the car, actually on top of the engine area. All of us on the trip (~10) are fortunate enough to get a turn on that seat (:-\)! When we're driving around and passing leopards and elephants, I wouldn't be surprised to feel like I was about to get mauled at any moment. No casualties so far, though, they've said. I won't be taking antimalarial medication because we're going during Africa's winter and mosquitoes aren't active at this time. I did get a hepatitis A shot and am taking an oral typhoid fever vaccine from McKinley, however.

Speaking of Africa's winter, I feel compelled to share something. When I tell people I'm packing for my trip to Africa, they're usually like "oh, so you're bringing lots of shirts and shorts and sun screen, right?" Then I tell them we'll be there during Africa's winter and they say, "oh, so you're bringing lots of sweatshirts and pants and stuff, right?" Turns out that both sun screen and a heavy winter coat are on the packing list. Winter in Africa means the temperature is a little below freezing at night and then over 100F during the day. Yeah. That's insane. Layers, they keep reminding us. I'm really curious about the resilience and determination of life in this climate at such an intense temperature range. These parts of Africa are extremely diverse despite the seemingly unfavorable conditions. If the conditions are predictable and regular, though, it makes sense that something out there found a way to survive in them.

When I get back, I've got a few days to myself and then I'm off to U of I again to take some classes and continue research in my lab. Some of my IBH friends will be around so I'm looking forward to hanging out with them in a non-stressed setting :-) It's looking to be a good summer.

Finally getting some sleep and about to go play some more Xbox (while I still can!),
-Matt

Keeping a Good Lab Journal (Matt Grobis)

I feel like I learned a lesson today that IBH has been trying to drill into our heads from day one.

I came into the Sears lab today with instructions to set up some opossum matings + tapes and then prepare some primers for PCR. The opossum matings went fine; I've been doing this every Monday since the start of the semester and lately it's been going really well. I got back upstairs, hung up the lab coat, put away the keys and i-card (I'm still not authorized downstairs) and got to my lab bench and...

Now what? I stared at the two boxes of primers for a moment before rifling through my bag to look at the notes I had taken from two weeks ago, when the P.I. (Dr. Sears, the head of the lab) and I did this for the first time. They were brief and scattered but had immense holes in them - did I add the ddH2O directly to the capsules, did I centrifuge first (and for how long?) and then add the water, did I add 10x the mass of the sample as uL or nL, was DEPC H2O ok if ddH2O wasn't available? I actually got scared, holding hundreds (thousands?) of dollars of technology in my hands and not knowing what to do. Dr. Sears was gone and the other students in the lab were busy doing their own projects. I've felt guilty making them take time out of their day to bring me up to speed, the new kid who's just a weight on the lab until he starts pulling his own weight. I looked at my notes again but didn't know where to start.

Fortunately, one of the other members of the lab saw me struggling and came over to help. She gave me her notes (much better ones, I might add) and gave me some advice on what to do before getting back to her work. After a question or two for clarification, I started prepping the samples and in a matter of minutes messed up because I hadn't read my notes (and hers) carefully enough. This happened again twenty minutes later, probably because I was a little tired as well (sorry Dr. Cheeseman, I know I know).

When I finally put the solutions into the PCR machine and hit "Start," I knew that I needed to really get serious about the notes I took during lab. In IB 270 and 271, it's important that we take notes so that we can know what we did when it comes time to write the lab report or (in 271) do the experiment again. But in those cases, I was with other students, working together in something that at most will cost me a few points in the long run with the semester. Now I was in the same situtation but with the trust of a professor, where my work is really an extension of her work, her career. I was handed something worth enough money that messing up would make me look pretty bad. And I almost couldn't do it.

Dr. Cheeseman keeps telling us that everything in IB Honors happens for a reason (wow, replace "IB Honors" with "life" and you have something philosophical going on). Jokes aside, I understand what he means now... the lab journals, the sleep. It's easy to brush the advice aside when we're working late into the night on something we put off, but in reality the man's right. I don't want what happened today to happen again.

Off to Walgreens to buy a fresh lab notebook,
-Matt

IBH Barbeque! (Matt Grobis)

Hello all!

So finally an entry that isn't about how much work we've had or how stressed I am. Today was the IBH barbeque that Dr. Cheeseman promised at the start of the year (don't worry - the reason it was today was because we forgot for a few months :-P). I walked to ISR to meet Darcy and saw Jess on the way. We walked together and met with three juniors in IBH when we got close. A few minutes later, we entered Dr. Cheeseman's back yard. It was awesome. His backyard has a big variety of different plants and the food was great. I've never been to a barbeque with such a diversity of food. Most of it was stuff I had never had, either, like Greek spinach pie or this type of plant that tastes like licorice. We had delicious liquid nitrogen ice cream, too, which was a necessity at such a science-y get-together. Everything was great... it was beautiful out, Dr. Cheeseman's wife was really nice, and everyone was just in a great mood.

It was really nice hanging out with these people I've stressed out with and worked all hours of the day with. We all swapped nerdy bio jokes and talked about our summer plans, what we were doing later that day, and just about anything really. I can tell that these are folks I'll be talking to years from now... Cally bought pizza Thursday evening / Friday morning and I couldn't break a $5 so I told her I'd pay for the IBH get-together in 20 years. We pinky-swore on it so I guess it's undeniably happening. I'm looking forward to saying "oh yeah, I knew so and so. We were in IBH together." Some day, some day...

Here's to more events like these :-)

-Matt

April's Here! (Matt Grobis)

Hi!

Phew, what a hard week... and right after the typical "tough week before spring break," too. The week before spring break, we had two lab reports due in IB 271 in addition to a lab report due in CHEM 237. I got some last-minute Sears lab work and had stuff in my other classes, too, so it was a loooong week. I slept like ten hours a day during break just catching up :-) (it was glorious). We came back to an open-note take-home exam that I figured wouldn't be too bad because I had studied over break. Yeah right! Every time I underestimate IBH I generally get my butt kicked... that exam took a cumulative nine hours. When that was finally finished, it was 5:00am Wednesday morning and I scraped together a few hours of sleep before my 10am.

Then in bio lab, while most of us are brain-dead and exhausted, Dr. Cheeseman announces that in this lab, we have to design our own procedure to answer a question on differential GAPDH activity in green and not-green sections of leaves. We knew we'd be re-doing the first experiment of the semester as a way to check how well we took notes in our lab journals, but the "design your own procedure" made me want to put my head in my hands and sleep/cry/etc. It was tough. But, my group collaborated, we pushed each other, and we got it done. Then that night I slaved at a chem lab report and designing a procedure for a final project synthesis. I was so tired. But I got through it.

The week's over and I'm looking forward to some beautiful sleep, watching season 2 LOST (I'm getting caught up!), writing creatively a bit, and just relaxing. Oh yeah, and doing plenty of homework of course.

On a non-homework-related note, I'm pretty happy with stuff. Classes are interesting, warm weather is lovely, karate yesterday was really fun, I have a sub-lease for this summer pretty much set up, I won $1100 scholarship for my 3-week study abroad in Africa this summer, things are good with the girlfriend... it's all good. All the work may be tough, but I'm learning a lot and feel I'm getting a lot smarter. With sophomore year drawing to a close, I'm comparing myself to who I was in that car going home at the end of freshman year and I wonder how I could say I knew much about biology at all... especially the experiment side of it. Yay IBH. Well now I'm really tired so I'm going to lie down... then Chipotle at 3:00 with the other karate instructors. Can't wait!

-Matt

New IBH Kids Coming In (Matt Grobis)

Hello!

So interviews for IB Honors are this week and I'm excited to see some fresh faces excited about biology :-) . This semester's been going well; I'm working in the Sears research lab and taking IBH and orgo labs so pretty much any day of the week 1-5pm I'm in some lab, haha. It's good though. At yesterday's lab meeting, the post-doc Lisa talked about this really interesting project idea she has regarding the evolution of mammalian hearing. Depending on the type of work she'd be doing, there's a chance I'll be joining her soon. I'm really excited... besides that, though, I'm learning lab techniques like in-situ hybridizations to analyze the opossum embryos and I'm learning to manage the opossum colony in the basement. That's one on the right if you're curious.

The longer I'm in IBH, the more I love it. The small class size can't be stressed enough. It's amazing. U of I is a huge place and it's hard to feel connected to the people around you when you see them for one semester in one of your classes and then never see them again. In IB Honors, though, I see the same people MWF every week for hours, and the core is extensive enough that I see them in pretty much all my other classes too. It makes U of I feel much smaller when you're working on that tough orgo problem set with your lab partners or comparing labs that look interesting or just seeing these people on the Quad. You can't help but become close because of all the time you end up spending with them. And everyone in IBH is so interesting... you don't leap into this major without loving biology (hopefully!), and so everyone has something interesting to add to a conversation. During last Wednesday's lab, some IBHers and I got into a discussion on the global warming "debate" (more so why some people - particularly those receiving funding from companies who would suffer from stricter emissions regulations - are taking such measures to deny global warming), possible evolutionary explanations for a belief in God, and even just our favorite books. For a school as enormous as U of I, this keeps me sane.

Well, I better get going. And to any students interested in IBH that are reading this before next week's interviews: good luck! Just relax and let your love for biology shine through.

-Matt

Into a new semester... (Matt Grobis)

Hi prospective IBH students!

After a long winter break to digest everything that had happened last semester, and after almost three weeks into this semester, I finally feel ready to contribute something meaningful here.

IB Honors is amazing. I'm in the perfect major. It's a huge challenge but you're in an environment that will help you achieve your goals. I've learned that IBH makes scientists. In other biology classes, you learn a lot about a certain topic. You go to lecture, listen, memorize facts and learn theories that coordinate those facts, and then you get tested and hopefully walk away with some of that information sticking around. In IBH, though, you're not only taught the facts - you're taught to evaluate them for yourself and to think critically. We read scientific articles last semester not just to learn something but to look at what we had previously learned and evaluate the information in a new context. And this semester, we learned about glycolysis and the kreb's cycle over two days in a really thought-provoking, step-by-step analysis of WHY this is happening, not just what was happening. We had to really think about every step of the process and not just memorize them. This, I feel, is how biology should be taught - not memorized from a book, but processed, challenged, and then finally laid to rest.

One bit of advice, though: IB Honors is amazing, no doubt. But as is the case with any time commitment, make sure you have the time to devote to it. IB, Orgo, and calc II last semester was really, really hard. I had a long and painful semester with those 12 credit hours alone (not including the psych class I took, which was minimal work compared to those behemoths) and I couldn't fully devote myself to orgo or calc. This semester, I cut it back quite a bit and I am much happier. I'm finding time to write creatively, devote myself to the lab I recently joined, and write meaningful lesson plans for the karate classes I help teach. Just having some breathing room makes a big difference. If you can handle a tough schedule, by all means go for it. Just know that IBH is going to take up quite some time outside of the 11-12 MWF and 1-5W :-)

Well, I better get going. In 7.5 hours I'm expected at Morrill to get trained to handle animals so I can start taking care of the possum colonies for my lab. Hope things are well with you, whoever is reading this. Good night!

-Matt

New Semester, New Tactics

Hi! This is the first post of Darcy Ross, a sophomore in the IB Honors program. To the left is a picture of an owl in flight, effortlessly gliding through the winter air. I find it inspiring, when all I want to do is hibernate through the winter.

Let me start out by saying that over one semester, IBH has shifted my course in life quite drastically and pointed me toward opportunities previously unfathomable. Perhaps even more significantly, the people in this program, both faculty and students, have served to fuel my enthusiasm about biology and the places it is taking me. IBH is a place where ideas take wing to the promised land of reality, and I am ever grateful for it.

That said, IB 270 rocked my world. The amount of work I put into that class, especially when it came to the Discovery Project, was orders of magnitude more than anything I had previously ŭndertaken. This was partly because of the challenges it inherently presented, and partly because I loved it so much that I would rather spend time on IB than on my Japanese or Orgo classes. Organic Chemistry in particular is a selfish beast, and retaliated against my neglect quite fiercely.

This semester, I seek a more balanced schedule. I decided to push physics back a semester, leaving me with only 13 credit hours (gasp!). I wanted to excel in my courses and spend more time in a lab (gaining some more credits, thankfully) so that I could start work on an independent project soon. That's what I told my parents, at least. It is all true, but I am also exploring a philosophy that I've often enjoyed reading about from the Study Hacks blog. Study Hacks is written by Cal Newport, MIT student and now post-doc, who investigated the study habits of straight-A students.

The main idea I'm trying to follow is his Zen Valedictorian philosophy. His summary of the philosophy:

If you understand…

• your interests and values,
• the psychology of impressiveness, and
• how to be productive and study efficiently,

then you can construct a student lifestyle that is…

• relaxed and free of chronic stress,
• intellectually engaging,
• wildly social and exciting, and
• just as impressive as if you had followed the path of the grind.

We can sum this all up in the following pithy motto:

Do Less. Live More. Get Ahead.

By purposely underscheduling my coursework, I will focus on other things that are fulfilling to me and often still productive in my career as a student: my Esperanto club; writing for the Journal of Young Investigators; writing bad poetry; doing yoga; having chats with some of the amazing, influential people just wandering nonchalantly on this campus; finding a topic for my senior thesis that truly interests me; reading; and in general exploring who I am and who I want to be. Now doesn't that sound fun?

As long as I strike the right balance, my GPA will benefit as well. I don't for one moment plan on slacking off--I am setting the goals higher this semester. I should be able to do better in my classes without just spending more time on them. I have much anecdotal evidence that a rested, happy mind is a smarter one, an example being: One night last semester, I accidentally got a full night's rest before my 8 AM Japanese class. My new-found comprehension, participation, and alertness startled me. I wonder which exams and other projects from last semester could have benefited from such a remedy. I want this state to be the norm, and I see no reason it won't be.

What are your goals this semester? Do you have any advice for other students?