A Very Sluis Update

Dear Sybilites,

Well done Billy Boy with resurrecting the blog. Good to hear things are going well, and congratulations to you and Suz for taking it to the next level. And sorry to hear about the job loss Jakey, though I am glad that you might be in AA soon. I should have a fair bit of free time on my hands, and you know you’ve got a place to sleep when you’re here.

As for me, I’ve been doing interviews for pretty much all of February. Starting at the end of January, I went out to Berkeley, had tons of fun, met tons of super smart people, and generally got my ego deflated into nothingness. Shit was real. Obviously the place was beautiful, the department was competitive while friendly, and everyone was on top of their stuff. Next was Michigan, then Minnesota, and finally Cornell. Cornell was the only other real place of note, as they had more people specializing in plant-microbe interactions, a field that I’m particularly interested in. They also had just about the nicest faculty you’ve ever met, so I was particularly reluctant to turn them down, but alas, I’m California bound. Overall, interviews were cool as my first real introduction to the scientific community.

Now that that’s over with, I’ve been concentrating back on my job, which is going swimmingly. Research is picking up overall; I should be outlining my first manuscript in the next couple weeks, and we should be submitting our last set of samples for microarray analysis in about a month for the other major project I’m doing. The way it’s looking, I should get a couple first-author publications, and be listed on a couple others, which is very cool. Beyond that, I’ve got plans to study up on some statistics/bioinformatics in preparation for grad school, and to identify what labs I want to rotate in at Berkeley.

The rest of my time is spent dicking around on my guitar, and riding my bike. Seeing as how I’ll be living in one of the nicest areas on the planet for road biking, I plan to be ready when I get there. I’m fairly seriously considering biking out to D.C. and back sometime in the spring or summer. This would depend on whether I can take enough time off work and still get done all the stuff I want to finish before going off to Cali. This, in turn, depends on whether I can convince some other entering students to move to Berkeley early and go backpacking/have fun for a few weeks before classes. Anyway, input from Naynay and Dutchess would be appreciated, as far as when you’ll be in D.C., and if there are any events that would be fun to plan around.

I miss you all terribly, and hope that everyone can make it back to Ann Arbor sometime in June, or whenever we decide is best. One thing that I’d like to point out, since James wasn’t able to make last summer’s reunion, I think we should try extra hard to accommodate him.

XOXOXOXO,

Sluisy

PS: Robot Unicorn Attack is maybe the greatest thing the internet has ever produced. Make sure to have the sound on, though you should probably use headphones.