Post Prelim

I was a cowboy for Halloween!

This has been a great week. The week started on Halloween when I had my preliminary exam. This is where I gave a thirty-minute presentation on my dissertation research proposal and then get questioned about my proposal and general biochemistry. As it turned out I was asked next to nothing about general biochemistry, I guess my proposed research was just that interesting. The research topic is rather unorthodox within the realm of scientific research. Almost all scientific research is hypothesis based; one proposes a hypothesis to explain an observation and then goes about to find supporting evidence, or lack thereof, of the said hypothesis. In contrast, my research is exploratory in nature. What this means is that I have no hypothesis, I have to go out and find one first. This fact led to a lot of interesting discussion in the prelim, which kept all of the questions on the research. The exam went a lot quicker than I was expecting. I passed and a celebration ensued. After the canonical lab party, the celebration continued as my lab mates and roommates took me out to Bull City Burgers. It was great! 

On Tuesday I didn’t even go into lab, I needed a break after a solid month of studying for my prelim. Instead I helped out the missionaries; first, by taking one to a transfer meeting and then bringing a new one back and, second, by taking them out to dinner and accompanying them to an appointment. The rest of the week was spent either in the lab or in the yard. I got back to lab quickly, researching the usefulness of map correlation coefficients. Since I let the yard go while I was preparing for my prelim it was in desperate need of TLC. I cleaned up fallen branches, raked leaves and weeds, mowed the lawn, turned the soil over in the garden, etc. There is still plenty to do. 

On Friday night I went to a concert given by Ingrid Fliter, an amazing classical pianist. I am absolutely in love with piano music. She played Beethoven and Chopin. It was nothing short of incredible! The pieces that she preformed were rather fast paced, thus her fingers were moving at a hundred miles per second up and down the keyboard. She made it look easy. Saturday I went to the volleyball game which is always fun. 

Looking forward, I have to get ready for a talk that I have to give at department retreat, which takes place this weekend out on the coast. I will then focus 100% on my research.

Fish

One of the coolest textbook figures I have ever seen! YAY randomness!!

"Principles of Biochemistry,"  Fifth edition by Moran, Horton, Scrimgeour, Perry.  Pearson, Boston: 2012. page 278

Gratitude

During a church service I received the distinct impression that I should be more grateful. As such, I dedicated myself to write down something that I was grateful for each day for seven days. This is what I came up with.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

I am grateful for my intellect. The ability to learn and grow is the very essence of true happiness. We must learn how to love, how to behave, how to serve, how to relate; we must even learn how to learn. Learning is something that we will do as a consequence of being conscientious. The choice is ours as to what we will learn. As a garden, it takes a great deal of work before something beautiful emerges but even left unchecked something will grow. It is therefore up to us to decide what we want to be. If we desire to be great we must begin by learning the attributes of greatness and then learning how to personally gain those attributes.

Monday, October 17, 2011

I am grateful for friends. Friends are truly God’s gift to His children. While I associate with many people at school and church, great friends occupy a much smaller circle. They are those who I know genuinely care for me; they even care for my silly pursuits simply because they are my pursuits. Friends are those who ask, ‘How are you?’ and sincerely mean it. While we may have true friends that sincerely care for us, it is us who chooses to let those people into the intimate aspects of our lives. If we do so we can find greater happiness than we can ever experience alone. The power of kindness, caring, and genuine love that true friends provide is yet another manifestation of our Father’s love for us.


Tuesday, October 18, 2011

I am grateful for my body. I have been given a great body that can do a myriad of awesome tasks. Sure, it doesn’t work as most bodies work. Fine motor coordination? Shot. Balance? Not so great. Voluntary muscle contraction? Yes, at least for almost all my muscles I control them. Look at what else I can do. I can ride my bike for several miles, I can hike, I can sleep and eat. If you really think about it, I can move the way that I want to move pretty much unimpeded. I can also think, learn, solve complex problems, perform dissertation research in biochemistry. Cycling, hiking, learning, growing...are these not synonymous to being happy. It is true, I am very grateful for my body.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

I am grateful for my two wonderful PIs (primary investigators), Dave and Jane Richardson. They are my mentors here at Duke. I am especially grateful for their enthusiasm for science; it makes research in their lab exciting. They are extremely supportive of their students; they both are helping me a great deal to prepare for my prelim. I literally can think of no other scientists that I would rather work under as a graduate student than Dave and Jane. The research that is done in the Richardson lab is not only extremely interesting but also rather unique. They are both great scientists and I feel privileged that I get to benefit from their mentorship.


Thursday, October 20, 2011

I am grateful for hemoglobin. Yes, I just said that. I am studying allostery and as I am sure you all know that the prototypical model for allostery is the effectual binding of O2 to one of the subunits in the tetramer hemoglobin. I am now spinning on rollers rather than riding on the road. Stationary cycling allows me to focus on the aerobics side of cycling. I have been so grateful for all the hemoglobin in my blood willingly delivering the needed O2 from my lungs to my leg muscles as I stubbornly ignore their screams of ‘STOP!’, a.k.a. the buildup or lactic acid.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Today I am grateful for cold medicine, perhaps the only medicine that does what it is suppose to do. My body has been trying to come down with a head cold all week and finally succeeded today. Unfortunately, a cold seems to take the edge off my mental aptitude; as such, studying is useless. But hey, I have a presentation to get ready for! So I thank you Acetaminophen and Phenylephrine.


Saturday, October 22, 2011

Today I am grateful for computers. My fine motor coordination isn’t exactly what it could be. As such, I have a difficult time with many of man’s mundane tasks: drinking out of a glass, tying my shoes, buttoning buttons, and, of course, writing. It is glaringly obvious that the computer has helped out a great deal with my inability to write. However, my gratefulness extends much further than that. I love biochemistry; I better, after all I am getting a PhD in the subject. A short twenty years ago one would highly doubt that I, given my physical limitations, could even attempt a PhD in such a field. Almost all biochemical research was done on the bench, I guess that is still true. But here I am in 2011 with no doubt that I can get a PhD in biochemistry. For that I thank you computers!

The preliminary exam prep

Well, it has been quite a while since I have written now, has it not? A lot of rather neat things have happened since my last post. As you know I am getting ready for my prelim, the exam I need to pass to officially become a PhD candidate. ‘Prelim’ is short for preliminary exam. OK, what’s that?

The preliminary exam consists of two major components, the written and the oral. By far, the oral is the bigger part. Don’t get me wrong though, the written is pretty tough too. The written is basically an NIH grant proposal where the student proposes what they will do for their dissertation research. When doing a dissertation a committee has the job of judging the research, make sure that the student is really doing PhD level work. When you hear a PhD candidate say that they are going to defend, it is the committee to whom they defend, they are defending their dissertation research. But that is still many years off for me. Back to the prelim. I have completed the written portion of the prelim (research proposal). The committee then inspects it and, if needed, requests revisions. I am at the point now where I have received the revision requests and am making those. I should be done tomorrow, at which point I will send a final draft to my committee. The oral takes place in two weeks.

In the oral the student, me, gives a 30-minute presentation on the proposed research. After this the committee asks questions to the student pertaining to not only the proposed research but also any topic in biochemistry. The questioning usually lasts for 2+ hours. Based upon your answers the committee will either pass you, thereby declaring the student competent to pursue the proposed dissertation research, or fail you. If the student passes there is great rejoicing. If they fail the student hits the books harder and then tries the prelim again in a couple months. If the student fails twice Duke will hand out a Master’s degree and send them on packing. “Thanks for trying!”

Random Crystal

So there you have it. I am right in the middle of preparing for my orals, studying my butt off. The main problem with my research is that it is more physics than biochemistry; remember that the committee can ask any question pertaining to the field of biochemistry. So basically I am trying to relearn material that I learned 4 years ago at Utah State. I rarely feel stressed, its just who I am, almost nothing in this world is so serious as to cause stress, right? However, this past week I have felt pangs of stress as I have come to realize that I don’t, and can’t, know everything that I think I’ll need to know for the prelim. I have received a small amount of comfort as I was told that, in the end, the committee is more concerned on how you can reason rather than how much you know. Still, the best way to prepare to reason through biochemical problems is to study biochemistry and gain as much knowledge as is possible.

With two weeks to go I feel there is a long way to go before I can confidently declare that I am ready.  Nonetheless, I feel like everything will work out just fine.

Utah State vs. Auburn

So you probably all are wondering how my ride went this weekend, right? As it turns out I got a call Wednesday night from a fellow Aggie here at Duke, Mitchell, who happened to have an extra ticket to the USU vs. Auburn game. When an opportunity like that comes along I take it!

I met up with Mitchell and two other Aggie fans, Eric and Eric, on Friday afternoon and we started the long drive to Auburn, Alabama. We went through South Carolina and Georgia before crossing over into Alabama. It was a long drive but the exceptional company made the trip go by quickly.

The next day we caught a shuttle to the stadium. Of course, there were a ton of Auburn fans tailgating around the Stadium.  This is where we first encountered the phenomenon known as Southern Hospitality. We were greeted more than several times with a “Welcome to Auburn” and a “Glad that you could make it down.” It made me ashamed of the way all the fans in Utah, choose any school you’d like, treat fans from other teams. I wish everyone could see what we saw and learn how you should treat others.

The game more than exceeded my expectations. Since we are Utah State and Auburn is the defending national champion I was only hoping that the Aggies would post a few points. I can honestly say that I have never seen Utah State play as well as they did that day. We consistently were getting first downs and marching right into the end zone. The Aggies had the lead most of the game. Unfortunately, USU’s weakness, the defense, showed as they let a ten point lead slip away in the final four minutes of the game. However, I was not disappointed! Utah State posted more yards than Auburn and the Aggie quarterback, true freshman Chuckie Keeton, looked sensational. I have little doubt about making it over 0.500 this year.

After the game we headed to Atlanta where we tried for an hour to get into the Boise State vs. UGA game but that didn’t work out. Sunday we went to the World of Coke in downtown Atlanta; it’s pretty much a Coke-a-cola museum on coke. The history of Coke with their classy marketing scheme was very neat. At the end there was a taste test where one could taste Coke products from around the word. Of course I didn’t taste any of it as my tummy cannot tolerate carbonation, but it was still fun to see all the different flavors of pop. After that we hit the road and made the uneventful trip back to Durham.

All and all it was a great time. Spending time with friends and making new acquaintances is always fun. I only hope that more road trips, with these great men, comes sooner rather than later.

Thank You!

I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the many donors who have supported my ride to raise much-needed funds for the Easter Seals UCP of North Carolina and Virginia. Your generosity will help many children and adults with disabilities live a full and happy life. The ride was originally supposed to happen tomorrow and Sunday; however, hurricane Irene could not time her arrival at a worse possible time. It has started raining here in central NC this evening and will only get worse tomorrow. Thus the ride for tomorrow has been canceled; riding will happen only on Sunday. 

I don’t ride on Sunday and this Sunday is no exception. However, I will ride the 64 miles for the Easter Seals UCP! I plan on doing it next Saturday, weather permitting. There are a few details that I need to work out. An important detail is how I can pull off 64 miles without the support I was looking forward to. After the ride I will post the details on how it went.

Again, I thank you for the support. I never imagined that I’d be able to raise nearly $2000 in ten days. Your generosity is much appreciated. As a person with a disability I know how hard it can be to ask for help but at the same time that help is greatly needed. It makes it easier when people offer the help. You have assisted a great organization that specializes in offering needed help to those who may need it the most.

Thank you,

Bradley

Cycling for a cause!

As you are all well aware I love to road cycle. As of late I've been riding a lot; 25+ miles three times a week. I also love to help people by getting them to question their own perceived limitations. Last night I found an event that brings these two activities into one. This is a bike ride called 'Ride Without Limits' and takes place in Pittsboro, NC. This ride benefits the Easter Seals UCP North Carolina & Virginia (UCP is United Cerebral Palsy). As a rider I need to raise $250 to ride. BUT I am trying to raise as much money as I can for this great organization. All proceeds will go to help children and adults with disabilities, not just Cerebral Pal

sy. Here is a blurb from UCP:

UCP’s mission is to advance the independence, productivity and full citizenship of people with all types of disabilities, not just cerebral palsy. With a nationwide network of affiliates and help from people like you, UCP is making it happen. One legal battle at a time. One program at a time. One person at a time

I plan to do a 64 mile ride. However, I ride for a purpose!! I am asking that you give $1 (or $0.50, whatever fits your budget) for every mile but ANY amount will help! Please be generous and donate here:

CLICK HERE to Help Bradley Out!!!

Lets help people find the opportunities to live without limits.

Thank you,

Bradley