International Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting Savings Year

Most of us involved in one way or another in academia are probably not strangers to financial hardship. As a part-time student with a full-time job, I'm probably better off than most students, and I'm still below "livable wage," especially in my corner of the country. While travel grants are often available, funding a weekend trip to a society meeting can still break the bank.

I may be jumping the gun a bit, seeing as I haven't yet become a formal member of SVP, but I am 99.9% sure I want to go to next year's annual SVP meeting in Cleveland, OH. And I'm also sure that if I don't start saving for it now, I won't be able to afford it, come October.

So, for all of you poor paleo people (ppp) who are in the same boat, I propose we do an offshoot of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWrMo) and set up a savings plan. The idea is to make a commitment to yourself and a few other people to save a certain amount of money, per week, to put towards travel costs. You can set a goal and monitor it on your site, much like NaNoWrMo folks, all the while inspiring other ppp to do the same.

There's a word cash counter here, to let others monitor your progress.

My goal is $2200 (for two people), so I'm hoping to save about $275 every month until the end of July.

Let me know if you're interested in the comments section of this post!

The Great Chemistry Experiment

Well, as I suspected, I did well on that one pre-lab that I didn't try to do well on. My frustration level was so high during my last lab that I finally just asked the TA what I could do to get better grades on my pre-labs, since I couldn't figure it out from the grades alone. His response was pretty much inaudible, except for "too detailed information." Anyway, here's the official publication of my findings:

The Great Chemistry Experiment

Amanda A. Student, B.S.*

*University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont

PURPOSE. Test the accuracy of the hypothesis that the pre-lab grades given by the TA are inversely proportional to the amount of work/preparation done.

PROCEDURE. Handed in several pre-labs done in the style required by the syllabus (type 1), which stated "a pre-lab consists of the title, date, purpose, brief procedure and data charts for the experiment." Handed in one pre-lab grade, not done in the style required by the syllabus and done with minimal effort and preparation (type 2). Compared grades from each type of pre-lab.

RESULTS AND OBSERVATIONS. Type 1 pre-labs came back with an average grade of 1.25/3. The Type 2 pre-lab came back with a grade of 3/3.

DISCUSSION. Type 1 pre-labs were done over the course of an hour (per pre-lab). A careful reading of the lab manual was done prior to the pre-lab writing process. Each Type 1 pre-lab was between 1/2 and 3/4 pages long and included a title, date, purpose, brief procedure and any necessary data chart. The Type 2 pre-lab was done in a five-minute window before the lab class. Minimal reading of the lab manual was done prior to the pre-lab writing process. The Type 2 pre-lab was less than 1/2 page long.

CONCLUSION. The results support the hypothesis that pre-lab grades are inversely proportional to the amount of work/preparation done.

Networking and Bacteria Sweater

Everyone is back from the SVP annual meeting and there's so many blog posts in the works! I've been reading as much as possible about the meeting and looking at photos, many of which picture people whose names I know and whose faces I'm not familiar with. It's fascinating, this little community of paleontologists. They're brilliant and funny and completely nerdy! I feel right at home. It's exactly the field I want to study, with exactly the right kind of people. And I'm starting to feel like it's within my reach...which is nice, since I'm still so fresh and it all seems so far away.

I've been thinking a lot about networking and how important it is. I actually started networking around age 12, when I decided that being a paleontologist way outweighed my other dream of being a movie star. It wasn't too long after Jurassic Park had come out (mind you, the dream of studying paleontology was around long before!!!) and I was getting regular issues of the "Dino Times." In one particular issue there was an interview with Peter Dodson. The article mentioned that Dr. Dodson worked at the University of Pennsylvania and I got on my detective hat and found his address. Over the course of three months or so, I regularly sent Dr. Dodson my drawings and he regularly sent me drawings as well, along with some advice on pursuing a career in paleontology.

Now, thirteen years later, I am still networking. I started off by joining the DML, though I've been mostly a lurker, since I don't have enough of an education to really contribute to the discussion. I've met paleo-bloggers of all ages and education levels, from all over the world. I've applied for membership to SVP, befriended paleontologists on Facebook andMyspace and started this here blog.

My hope is that next year, when I can afford to attend the annual SVP meeting, I'll go there and feel right at home. That way, my anxiety won't get in the way of my experience and I'll go home even more excited than ever.

Also, my new favorite keyword search that brings people to my blog: bacteria sweater.

It must be Catday

Last night I had a dream in which I went to my old house in Connecticut to spend the night. The house is, in reality, currently for sale. It was for sale in my dream as well and I had to sneak into it. I had J with me and it turned out that we weren't alone; there was a police officer staying there with a girl I didn't know. The police officer started to give me crap about breaking in and threatened to hurt me if I didn't leave, but somehow I convinced him that it was no more wrong for me to be there than it was for him and his girlfriend. When he finally let me walk around the house, I noticed that my cat Freya was there (Freya died three years ago when a pitbull tried to eat her). I immediately got upset upon seeing her because it meant she had been there alone, for a long time. And I got even more upset that I have three cats living in my apartment and wouldn't be able to take her home with me. But J whispered "It's okay, we can take Freya, too."

So I woke up...and I tried to tell J about the dream before I forgot. And of course, I was falling asleep in between my words. And I ended with "I miss my cat." And J said that the way I said it made him want to cry.

The dream made me feel especially warm toward the cats I own now and I had a hard time leaving the house because I just wanted to pet them and spend time with them.

Anyway, I got to work and started with my daily blog fix and Brian at Laelaps had a fantastic video about cats posted. I decided that today is just a day for cats...Catday if you will. So I'm gonna share some pictures of my little fuzzball friends, because I love them so so much.

Miss Emily (a.k.a. Smemilypoo or Smem)

Echo (a.k.a. Stinkyhead or Boo-bear)

I'm starving...

Every morning I make a long journey from my car to my office. I'm sure anyone working at a university understands. There is no way that the parking office could put me in the parking lot right next to my office. Instead, I have to park in the gymnasium parking lot...a full fifteen minutes (walking time) from my office.

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, since I didn't intend on posting about my transportation issues...

What I really want to gripe about is my chemistry lab. I promised the conclusion of an experiment last week, but my TA didn't manage to grade our pre-lab reports, so I have to wait until Thursday for that one.

But I did learn something interesting during my last lab class...and it had nothing to do with heats of reaction or calorimeters.

Remember when I was fretting about my pre-lab grades? (If not, then catch up here) Well, in lab last Thursday, before class, I asked a few classmates how their pre-grades were. I turned out that everyone I asked had had very similar problems...big X's through their procedures sections with no explanation and poor grades, also without explanation. The most explanation I have gotten about the big X through my procedure section was this: "too detailed information." Well, we decided to collectively ask about the procedures section. And y'know what?!? The TA said, "you're not supposed to do one." WHAT??? Are you kidding?

Let me explain why this is such a huge problem for me...

1. The syllabus says this: "A pre-lab consists of the title, date, purpose, brief procedure and data charts for the experiment," so I assumed that a procedure was necessary. Essentially, I'm getting penalized for doing something that was asked of me in the syllabus.

2. The TA failed to mention, after at least half of the class added a procedures section to their pre-labs for FOUR WEEKS, that a procedures section was not supposed to be on the pre-lab and then continued taking points off for it.

3. The TA wasn't planning on mentioning that a procedures section was not supposed to be on the pre-lab and only did so after we asked him about it.

I'm pretty annoyed. I've put a lot of time into my chemistry class and it's paying off, except for in the lab. I'm not telepathic...I can't read my TA's mind. I only have the syllabus to go by and according to the syllabus, I'm doing exactly what's been asked of me. If there's a change in the expectations, then fine...who am I to say how the class should run and how grades should be calculated. But tell me about it!!! Don' t write "too detailed information" when you really mean "take this whole thing out."

I'm afraid that approaching the TA will give me the same response he's given most other people: "that's just how I grade." I'd probably just end up crying or something.

PZ's Mutating Genre Meme

I have been tagged for my second meme by Brian over at Laelaps! I love it! This one was a little more complicated than the first. Here're the rules:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

* You can leave them exactly as is.
* You can delete any one question.
* You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
* You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
* You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My ancestry:
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite
My great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock
My grandparent is The Anterior Commissure
My parent is Laelaps

And without further ado:

The best scary movie in sociopolitical dystopias is: 28 Days Later (I still haven't seen Children of Men...)

The best sexy song in ambient music is: "Let Go" by Frou Frou

The best scary story in horror novellas is: "The Langoliers" by Stephen King

The best B-movie in 1980's horror films is: The Evil Dead

The best television series in mockumentary comedy is: Arrested Development


The following can considered themselves tagged:
Apparent Dip
Matt at Ask Dr. Vector
Zach at When Pigs Fly Returns
Julia at The Ethical Palaontologist
Darren at Tetrapod Zoology
Neil at Microecos

More school questions...

The other night I went to a fascinating lecture by Dianne Newman, PhD of MIT. The lecture was called "Bacteria are Beautiful" and it was a general overview of bacteria that didn't get too technical, but contained enough sciency stuff to satisfy the academics. One of the things Dr. Newman mentioned was magnetotactic bacteria. She showed us a video which took us on a "tour" of a Magnetospirillum cell, both in cross-sections and then inside the cell, where we could see the magnetosomes connected to the inner cell membrane. I'm pretty sure I sat there with my jaw on the floor...

I also got to attend an informal luncheon with Dr. Newman and about 15 female science students. We talked about what it's like to be a woman in a science field, how Dr. Newman made her first big discovery and how her career progressed. One of the questions I asked was "did the work that graduate students and PhD students were doing seem out-of-reach and more complicated than you could handle as an undergraduate?" The question sparked a good deal of conversation and I got a lot of good feedback from many of the other students, who, though younger than I am, had finished more of their undergraduate studies.

Another thing we talked about was financial aid for graduate school. I was under the impression that graduate school worked a lot like undergrad school as far as finances were concerned. Instead, I was told that science graduate students don't pay for their graduate degrees... they are funded by the professor/advisor they are working under. Is this true? Is it possible that I could end my educational career with undergraduate debt and a minimal amount of debt from graduate school? It seems too good to be true.

Serious Questions I Would Like to Have Answered:

1. How does the graduate school financing thing work?
2. How does the PhD financing thing work?
3. Did it seem nearly impossible, as an undergraduate, to ever achieve the things that graduate students and PhD students were achieving?

Not-So-Serious Questions I Would Like to Have Answered:

1. How did the woman who used the toilet before me manage to get 5 pubic hairs on the toilet seat?

Gripes...

Why are women's sweaters really tight, really thin and really short? I don't understand this. Men get sweaters with some bulk...they're thick and warm and cover all of the important body parts. Women get loosely-knit sweaters that barely touch the waist of their pants.

I bought a sweater yesterday and when I got home, I put it on and flapped my arms up and down. No, I wasn't trying to fly...I was doing the wind test, which I highly recommend for any winter clothing. The sweater I had just bought didn't pass. Not at all. Not one fricken' bit. When I flapped my arms, I could feel cold air. Because the sweater was as thin as a tee shirt.

J bought a sweater, made by the same company, for only $10 more. It's so warm! And it passes the wind test. But, according to him, it's "mannish," and I wonder about how important that is. When I'm walking to my car across campus at 10:00pm on a February night, am I going to care that I look sleek and feminine in my tiny worthless sweater? No...my teeth will be chattering and I'll be wondering why I didn't wear the bulky man sweater.

I'd like to start a clothing line based on the following:

1. Not all women are impractical.
2. Not all women like pastel colors and flowers/snowflakes/bunnies.
3. Not all women are under 5'6" tall.
4. Not all women have no use for pockets.
5. Not all women are over age 50 or under age 16.
6. Not all women want their pants to barely cover their crotches.

Any others I've missed?

I'm not an alcoholic, I'm a geologist...

Are all geologists alcoholics? I set out to answer this question after a few web searches on the subject of geology seemed to have a very common thread. What I found was a bit frightening…and a lot funny.

My favorite online source is Wikipedia…if I’m looking for easy, potentially inaccurate information. And I was looking for just that today when I found “Geologist” in the Wikipedia Uncyclopedia. The article starts off with the following: “Geologists are 'scientists' with an unnatural obsession with rocks and alcohol. There is a considerable, and still growing body of scientific literature that suggests that geologists are in fact the world's first alcohol-based life form.”

The only geology enthusiasts I know are myself and Annoying Geology Guy from my calc class. I certainly know I’m an alcoholic (of the recovering sort) and AGG probably qualifies as one, since he can’t seem to make it through a class without a fix, but that doesn’t mean ALL geology people are louses, right? Further research was necessary.

Majors; A Guide, featured on http://www.californiaaggie.com/, by Garrett Mccord, says about geologists that “These people worship the following characters: Indiana Jones, the main paleontologist guy in Jurassic Park, the geologist chick from Tremors, and Lara Croft.” At the end he adds, “Oh yeah, and they're all raging drunks and potheads.” My interest in Indiana Jones, Dr. Alan Grant and Tremors support Mccord’s statement, but I don’t know much about Lara Croft, so I’ve rejected his idea and moved on in hopes of finding more information.

In an attempt to find more prestigious sources, I came across an article in the New York Times. The article, titled With Great Beer, It's All in the Rocks (and That Doesn't Mean Ice), written by Kenneth Chang, discusses how different minerals and chemicals in the Earth contribute to the beer-making process. Change writes, “Beer and geology, on the other hand, are closely entwined, Dr. Maltman said last month at a seminar on geology and beer held at a meeting of the Geological Society of America. For one, geologists drink lots of beer, typically ending a long day examining rocks with a trip to the nearest bar.” So, not only are geologists alcohol-based life forms, but they also spend their time at “geology and beer” seminars. Sounds slightly suspicious to me.

It turns out that geology isn’t just related to beer…it’s related to scotch, too. In Consumed-Let's Rock, Marty Jones reveals the discovery and marketability of the process of cooling scotch with granite. Howard Lahti, a geologist, discovered that granite perfectly cooled his scotch without diluting it. He packaged pieces of granite and sold them online.

In the end, I’m fairly convinced that the saying “I’m not an alcoholic, I’m a geologist” is fitting. It seems that geology does have close ties with alcohol…if not alcoholism. I’m wondering if it’s a requirement that geologists drink alcohol and if I should just quit while I’m ahead.

References:
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Geologist

Jones, Marty. Let's Rock . Consumed. http://www.westword.com/2003-03-20/dining/consumed/full

Mccord, Garrett. Majors, a Guide. http://media.www.californiaaggie.com/media/storage/paper981/news/2004/01/12/Features/Majors.A.Guide-1316085.shtml

Chang, Kenneth. With Great Beer, It's All in the Rocks (and That Doesn't Mean Ice). The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/science/14beer.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FA%2FAlcoholic%20Beverages

A post for Zach...

Zach from When Pigs Fly Returns left a comment on my blog a while ago and we got to talking about the Jurassic Park action figures. In the spirit of our conversation, I wanted to post a few pictures of those figures. Unfortunately, I only took one picture of the action figures and then took a zillion pictures of my apartment (mainly the dinosaur living room) and a few of J. Still, I wanted to share them all... So, without further ado, a montage of images from my life, as of this morning and a picture of my old Jurassic Park toys:




First: This is our bookshelf. Notice the PostSecret books, which I am completely addicted to. Displayed are my old JP toys. There's a juvenile T rex, a couple of Dilophosuarus, "Velociraptor," Procompsognathus, Stegosaurus, and a Pachycehpalasaurus. I was about 11 when Jurassic Park came out (the movie) and I was so in love with it.

Second: This is the dinosaur living room. It's where we hide all of my nerdy dinosaur paraphernalia. Notice my cat, Emily. She can't NOT be in a picture, especially in the morning when she hasn't been fed. We have a huge "dinosaur" panorama poster on the wall (we like picking out the non-dinosaurs). You can see the bookshelf and my dinosaur coasters (in the window). The bottom picture is a close-up of them. My friends Christy and Alex made them for me for my birthday. I talk about them in my birthday post. They're beautiful!

Third: This is the cast that J and I made at Dinosaur State Park on Labor Day. It's from a trackway made by a Dilophosaurus-like dinosaur called Eubrontes. We still have to put some polyurethane on it and paint it.



J hesitantly agreed to let me take a picture of him even though he had woken up only seconds before. In the second picture, Emily is trying frantically to get off of J's shoulder, while it takes me a million hours to snap the picture. She scratched him pretty good. J's got some really nice tattoos (the mirrors on his forearms and Celtic knot on his wrist). My favorites are his ammonites (which he says are just shells, but I call them ammonites anyway) and his birds. The birds are on his chest and they point down and in towards his sternum. I've thought it might be a good idea to get two Quetecoatulus northropi on my chest...