Acceptance

I had finally decided, made up my mind, crossed all the others off my list. Stanford and Hopkins were the schools were I felt most at home with the people and the program, but Stanford won out with more people I really wanted to work with in each of the various fields (within neuroscience) that I'm interested in. I also felt the biosciences program there was more integrative, and would give me exposure to more non-neuro topics.

And then once I had crossed out Hopkins and Rockefeller (too small for my undecided interests), UCSD popped up again because apparently Stanford could not run unopposed. But while I loved UCSD as well, I think it might be the opposite of Rockefeller - too big for my undecided interests. Stanford was the only one that I didn't have any objections to program-wise, and everything I loved about it overpowered my hesitation over staying in the same place for another 5-6 years.

"I'm going to accept Stanford's offer!" I exclaimed to myself, excited that the vacillation was over. I grabbed my admission letter, looked up the website, extremely happy to be done with the decision making - and then I read the instructions. You have to wait one day after creating an ID in order for the system to give you permissions, then you can go accept your offer. Damn it.

So now, faced with a day to wait before I can act on the decision I made, all of my choices are floating before my eyes again. Was it a mistake to decide against Harvard so easily? So many of my friends among the recruits are going there and it's not so bad, right? All of my reasons against the other schools seem to have dropped in my (relative) panic. But I have to put it out of my mind right now and get my paper written so that I can work on my poster for my thesis. And probably after a good night's sleep, my full confidence in my decision will be recovered. Regardless, for now I'll trust my judgment and refuse to second-guess myself, so I think I can let you know I've made a decision now - I'm going to Stanford!

Quietly Brilliant (or, An Ode To My Aria)

I have to say, HTC's tagline seems pretty much on the ball to me. I didn't know much about HTC until I got my Aria last year, but it is brilliant. And their whole "it's about you" campaign? Well, at least some of the designers seemed to agree, since they came out with the Aria last summer.

It's not the most amazing, largest screen, highest resolution, superfast smartphone out there. But bigger isn't always better. That wasn't what I was looking for when I was getting a new phone. What I needed was a phone that fit in my pocket.

Now, I would be willing to bet the majority of programmers and engineers working on these phones are male. Unless they're wearing hipster jeans, their pants have big pockets. iPhones fit. Droids fit. Size is not an issue, and their smartphones just keep getting bigger and bigger. The only small phones are dumb phones. But someone at HTC looked at these phones and thought, "Hey, maybe there's someone out there that has smaller hands and smaller pockets and wants a smaller phone that's still pretty darn smart." I don't want to suggest that it's a girl phone, but it's definitely a small people phone.

It's fast and responsive, even more so now that I have Froyo (Android OS 2.2) on it, and is so comfortable to hold. The soft touch finish on the back is, well, soft, but also non-slippery. HTC Sense looks lovely and acts quickly, and comes with a lot of the features for which other Android users have been rooting (gaining root user access in order to have more options) their phones and voiding their warranties. With Swype installed as my main keyboard (something you cannot have on, say, an iPhone), typing one-handed is extremely easy and fast.

I mentioned I got this phone last year, right? It was last September, after my old phone stopped working, and I'm still absolutely in love with it. That's a testament to its worth.

Final Impressions

My arms feel like noodles right now. Today was the first time in 6 weeks that I was finally able to go to yongmudo! The one week when I was here on a Wednesday night, I was sick. And Mondays are usually spent in the lab, but that wasn't going to work out today, so instead I worked out today.

So basically, interviews are over. Of the places I went to, I got accepted to most (but not UCSF) and waitlisted at one (Hopkins). And now, I have to decide where I want to go. This is a really hard choice because all of these schools have top-flight neuroscience programs. My top 3 keep fluctuating, so I was waiting a couple days after this last visit to allow them to solidify, and I think they're getting there. Stanford and Hopkins are at the top (contingent on my actually getting in to the latter), with Rockefeller close by. I can't just rule it out yet because it's a completely different type of program (not neuroscience alone), and I'm soon going to have to decide just what I want. Harvard and UCSD are right beyond that.

Many of the other interviewees I met are choosing between Harvard and UCSF, but those two didn't feel quite right for me. Harvard felt a bit more tense, which might be unfair because it was the first interview, but another recruit, an undergrad there, independently agreed with my assessment (pictures, by the way, are not all of the campuses, but just my favorites I took in each place). The thing is, I really liked Harvard, but then I went to Hopkins and liked it more.

UCSF, on the other hand, felt, if anything, too familiar. I did an internship there a couple summers ago, and while it was fun, it made me decide not to go into strictly computational work. And maybe that feeling was sticking around, making an appearance as soon as we visited the Mission Bay campus (lovely as it is there). When I learned I hadn't gotten in here, I was not all that disappointed.

I liked the feeling at Hopkins, though I don't know why. For whatever reason, I came home feeling like I could live and work there and be happy for the next 5 years. More importantly, that feeling stuck around beyond the first weekend, unlike with some of the others.

The same went for Stanford, where I felt not only extremely comfortable, but very excited about the professors and labs (probably because more exposure to current goings-on in neuro over the course of interviews meant I understood more).The weekend there was also common for all of the biosciences, and it did in fact feel like there was more collaboration between departments.

Rockefeller, on the other hand, does not have a neuroscience-specific grad program. There are fewer neuro labs, but much more exposure to a broader range of topics in biology and chemistry. I loved hearing not only about the neuro, but also about cancer metastasis and developmental cell death that isn't run by apoptotic machinery. I thought I was extremely interested in neuro, which is still true, but having that breadth around me felt nice. That's how you make discoveries, by drawing together different fields and new ideas.

I also feel a strong connection to the place because that's where my postdoc mentor worked for a while. That's where another postdoc in our lab was a grad student. And most importantly, that's where my parents, then postdocs working at Rockefeller, lived when I was born. That's where I lived until I was 8 months old. I've got history there.

At any rate, it's going to be a very difficult decision. Fortunately, I have some time to decide, and wherever I end up going, I will probably end up happy. Unfortunately, I now have to use my noodly arms to lift my heavy genetics book and study for my quiz/midterm/midterm this week, so that's all for now, folks!

The Placebo Effect

We talked about placebos for a little while in the "Psychology of Consciousness" class I'm taking this semester. So far, it's been mostly the various theories that encompass the history of the study of consciousness, but is still sometimes a little too abstract for me. That said, the placebo effect is pretty real and pretty fascinating.



There seems to be a physiological basis for the placebo effect in pain - some neurons of the Raphe nuclei in the brainstem project down to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, where primary sensory neurons enter on their way up from the body. Those involved in sensing pain make a synapse here, and that's where this effect can act. The Raphe neurons release serotonin to stimulate inhibitory interneurons, which then release enkephalin (an endogenous opioid) directly onto the axons of the pain-sensing neurons before they transmit the signal to the secondary neurons in the pain pathway. So less pain.

But this still doesn't answer the question of how our beliefs can affect the size of the effect, and why that effect is always about half of whatever we believe it should be. And then there's the placebos that are used for things other than just pain (homeopathy, for instance). Do they in fact work better than no treatment at all? And if they do, how? So many questions, so little known.

Interviews are Fun

Interviews for grad school can be nerve-wracking and exhausting. But I cannot deny what an experience it is to talk to all these awesome neuroscientists doing amazing work at the forefront of their fields. Much of this work is probably unpublished, so we get to see all of these questions and answers that are going to show up in the big journals within the next year or two.

If that doesn't excite you to no end, well, grad school might not be the right place for you. But for me, being in this community, with people who are as excited as me about the cool stuff being discovered, is like being on cloud 9. Or maybe cloud 8 (I like the number 8).

There's still the tiredness and the work I have to make up and missing multiple weekends of my last semester at Berkeley. But hearing about cutting edge research (sometimes literally, with electron microscopy), making friends with other recruits on the interview circuit, and getting free food/drink/hotel/airfare (which is honestly the least of it) - so worth it.

Interviews Are Exhausting

Harvard's interview weekend for the graduate Program in Neuroscience was this past weekend. And so it was that I happened to be sitting in the airport Thursday morning before my flight, sporting a new black peacoat with my carry-on bag in front of me (with gloves, hat, and scarf easy to reach in the outer pockets). There I met another applicant from Berkeley, and we boarded the plane together, chatting about our majors, the interview, and our expectations.

About an hour after our arrival at the hotel, the first year grad students picked us up in groups to take us to pre-arranged dinners at various restaurants around the city. It was a nice opportunity to talk to not only the grad students, but also the other recruits, the majority of whom I will probably see at future interviews (we'll all be best friends by the end of this, I guess!).

Anyway, for the night, we stayed at the Best Western Inn a couple blocks from the Longwood medical campus, which was convenient, as the next morning turned out to be quite snowy.

A short walk down the street, and we arrived at the Harvard Medical School campus, where the program and many of the faculty's labs are housed. Nearby were the many hospitals and medical institutes where most of the remaining faculty worked.

We had 2 half-hour interviews that morning, with a short break for a talk (during which my eyes were closing not for lack of interest, but for lack of sleep) and lunch, followed by another 3 interviews, and then a reception/mixer at which we could mingle with and talk to other faculty we were interested in working with.

Busy day. Exhausting, really. And so of course that night everybody was taken on an outing to King's for bowling fun! Except the few of us under 21, who went instead to an improv comedy show (Improv Asylum, check them out if you're in Boston - they were pretty good). We had a little time before the show, so we walked a few streets up and down the North End, and got some cannolis from Mike's Pastries.

The next morning, we got on a bus to visit the Cambridge campus (where Harvard's undergraduate college is located) and the faculty working there. Our bus, however, turned down a small side street lined by snow-covered parked cars. Almost at the end of the street, we got stuck. There wasn't quite enough space for the bus to pass, but we were too far to back all the way out. So after some discussion, we disembarked the bus and walked a block in the snow to our target, the building with whale skeletons just hanging around.

Some talks, pizza, and fun faculty stories later, we scurried down to Harvard Square, where we got what was purportedly "the best hot chocolate in the world" (Madagascar for me - I liked the flavor of "citrus with a hint of vanilla"). Extremely rich and chocolatey, and certainly quite yummy. While there, I happened to spot an entire store devoted to my namesake, though unfortunately I didn't get a chance to go inside.

Our hot chocolate done, we waited in the cold for the M2, early enough to visit the library and see the skull of the legendary (to neuroscience students, anyway) Phineas Gage.

You may have noticed that is the library, not the skull. I have no pictures for you because there was no photography allowed. Sorry. Here, instead, is a helicopter flying in to one of the medical centers, which I couldn't fit in anywhere else in the post.

Returning to my story, that last night, the recruits had dinner with some of the faculty members, either at their homes or nearby restaurants. The advice they all reiterated? When you're choosing a thesis lab, don't focus on a specific topic. Keep an open mind, but pick a lab based on the mentor. Good parting advice. I will keep it in mind.

Interview the First

I'm heading to Boston in the morning for my first interview weekend. I'm excited, and a tad nervous, but it should be a lot of fun. Weather report says it won't be snowing on either of the days I'm flying, though it will be snowing Friday. I got myself a nice warm peacoat in preparation, and I've got some layers packed away, so I'm hoping I won't freeze too much.

I'll post a report and some pictures upon my return. Arrivederci!