Do I dare?

*slowly ventures back into the world of blogging*

wow...not much going on, eh?

So...I'm in school...dropped university symphony to take the honors section of my Concepts in the Biomedical Sciences course. I think it's been worth it. The class involves freshman research, and is the only class at MSU to do that, and MSU is one of only three universities to do freshman research. So...basically for the last ten weeks I've been isolating, amplifying, cloning, and inserting a gene from Tetrahymena thermophila, - a pond organism - into E. coli cells. This will allow research to be done on this gene, which is a homolog to the Sirtuin 2 gene in homo sapiens, which regulates ...something with cell life longevity, and gene transcription silencing or something. Still working on that part. :p Anyways, different projects can then be done on the Ttherm gene to figure out what it does, and to make relevant generalizations to the Sirtuin2 gene in humans. It's actually related to cancer research, believe it or not.

As of now, I have A's in all of my classes. In fact, I have set the curve for both exams in psychology, and I have a 115% average in that class. Praise my God. :) BMS and Chemistry are both bordering on the "A" line, and my religions class (don't take religion at a state school, btw), is 94%, I think.

So...there's a quick update..enjoy!

The Interminable Wait

H.O.L.Y. C.O.W. Talk about taking a while between blog posts. :p Aunt Kady, this post is for you! ;)

Okay, so I ended up purchasing the Asus EEE PC 1005ha netbook. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220551 I also purchased a Samsung external CD/DVD player with USB power since no netbooks come with an internal media drive. After about a week of having it, I went ahead and upgraded to 2gb of memory from the stock 1gb. Total, the netbook/accessories have cost $465. Mom and dad paid for about half of that for my birthday/graduation gift. It's a pretty sweet little thing, and it runs most of the games I own. Unfortunately, the native screen resolution is 1024x600 (widescreen), and most games don't look too good in that resolution. I have an 17in CRT monitor at home that I use as my external monitor. It's not the best looking monitor, so I hope to upgrade come Christmas time with a 20" LCD flat panel monitor, saving room on my desk and making the screen look a TON better. As far as system capabilities go, I can run my chat client, watch a Hulu.com video and browse the internet all at the same time. Occasionally the Hulu.com video will run a bit choppy, but if I pause it and let it buffer, it's okay again. Just watching the Hulu.com video, it never has problems.

Okay, enough about that...

I am in NY right now. Over the weekend my family helped my brother move up to Buffalo, NY so he can attend the school there in hopes of obtaining his Ph.D. in chemistry. After getting him settled, my parents, two younger sisters, and I crossed the state and came to Long Island, where my grandparents live. *waves hi to grandparents* We are spending about a week here before heading back to Missouri.

And on to school..
I have no idea what the last thing I said about school was. I received a $500 scholarship from the Medical Explorers group I am in at the hospital towards my school fees, plus I received a $500 scholarship from Southwest Home Education Ministries for use towards the same end. I went through the Student Orientation, Advisement, and Registration program at school (freshman orientation), and have registered for all my classes for the fall. I am taking Concepts of Biomedical Sciences, General Chemistry 1 for the science major, Introduction to Psychology, Literature and World of the Old Testament (honors), University Symphony, and Introduction to University Life (honors) for a total of 16 credits. To be technical, provided I do not drop a class this semester, I will be a Sophomore at the end of this fall semester, with 30 credits to my name.

And for the future...
I am contemplating a mission trip to Haiti next summer. I have yet to actually talk to the missionaries my family knows down there about that, but my parents and I are praying about it. I'll probably email the missionaries when I get back home from NY, if not while here. I'll keep you updated on this item, and we'll see if it goes anywhere. I was challenged to go on another missions trip by a friend...it struck me as odd that even though I consider "missions" to be a large part of my calling by Christ, I've only been on two missions trips in my whole life. To be fair, I DO consider doing music and preaching at the local mission to be "missions" work, but I feel called to foreign missions...anyways, I felt very strongly that I should again pursue some overseas missions work. So...we'll see what happens. :)

Okay, that's enough for now. Sorry again for the lengthy wait between posts.
Laterz,
Siah

Scholarships and PC's

OH! One thing I forgot to mention....I was selected to be the recipient of this years Medical Explorer Senior Scholarship. It's a $500 award, deposited into your student account at whatever institution you are planning on attending. It's awarded based on academic achievement, community service, and evidence of leadership. I was pretty stoked about getting that one. So I've got another $1000 in my student account at MSU in addition to my scholarships...I'll probably either save it for a couple of years and buy a really nice MacBook, or use it on food when I'm practically living at school.

Oh, speaking of MacBooks and computers...I'm debating between getting a Netbook (mini-laptop) or a real Laptop (like as a replacement desktop) or a Netbook and a Desktop...or other various combinations of those 3 items...

A netbook would be very handy for school. It weighs an average of 3 lbs, and is about 10-11 inches diagonally. It's excellent for word processing, email, and internet. It's media processing ability is below-par. Hard drive size is around 120-160 GB. Average cost of a decent netbook, outfitted, is $450.

A Desktop is great for at home use. It allows for games, hi-speed internet, word processing, and a myriad of other things, such as media work. It's the fastest option in processing power, and will have the largest hard drive (600-800 GB). Average cost, $750.

A Laptop would most likely be used as a desktop replacement. It would be powerful enough to play games and work with media, but also portable enough to take to school. It would be about 9 lbs, and measure anywhere from 15-18 inches diagonally. It's not quite as fast as the desktop, but still is decent, and will have a medium sized hard drive (320gb). It runs about $1000-1200 on average.

Then of course, through all of this, is the eager waiting for the new Windows 7 OS to come out...it runs with half the processing power that Vista requires, and from talk from Beta users, runs better with the un-finished Beta then Vista does fully updated.

Finals, and WHAT is Research, Pt. 1

To Ms. Laura....I'll eventually get around to answering your question that you asked regarding "research" on my last post.

Finals are over. I got a B in Calculus 1 and an A in English Composition 2. I was rather excited about both. Going into my english final, I had only recieved 3/5 papers back from the teacher. So I only knew that I had an 82.5% average for my papers. I really wasn't sure what my grades were in the class, because he wouldn't tell us a lot about how attendance and in-class work affected our grades...but apparently I did good enough, cause I got an A. Calculus 1 I was also very excited about. I had to get a 69% on the final to get a B, which I apparently got....I wish you could see the final, and see what score you really made, etc....

My senior recital is coming up rather quickly. Very scary, actually... 6 days. I have a total of 7 solos and 2 duets...solos have to be memorized...I can ...get through all but two of the solos by memory...but only 2 fairly decently. I'll make it, I know..it's just nervewracking. My hands were swollen so bad on Tuesday. I couldn't hardly grip anything or make a fist with either hand. It wasn't too hot. lol But they are better now, and I'm back to practicing and staring at my music for a few hours a day.

Okay...now...MY view of Research....
I saw "research" as....mm...an exploring of a topic, and then writing my conclusion about that topic. So, in the case of home schooling which I wrote about (and I believe I have posted on my other blog), I wrote my conclusion, based on a question that I asked at the beginning to get me jumpstarted. My question was "Is home schooling effective?" I looked at the history of homeschooling, the legality of homeschooling, the cirriculum available to homeschoolers, the academic acheievements of homeschoolers compared to their public school counterparts, the success of graduates after high school, and the satisfaction of homeschooled graduates and their parents after homeschooling. I came to the conclusion that "Yes, home schooling is a generally effective method of schooling, and has higher average academic achievement rating then other methods of home schooling." This view I expressed in my paper, not really including other viewpoints or bringing any "other sides of the arguement" into play. This was mainly because there WASN'T a lot of good evidence against home schooling. It was mostly people calling it "child abuse" and ranting about how "homeschoolers aren't socialized, won't know how to function in the real world, etc"....actual evidence (usually done scientifically, or using psychological studies, see Dr. Brian Ray, etc) goes directly against these claims. So in my paper, which is essentially my conclusion of the research I've done, I ignored these false claims, and only used evidence which actually had something to back it up.

I'll get to the "school" version of research in my next post....

Piano Papers...

I have a piano recital tomorrow. And for once, I actually made it TWICE through my song at my piano lesson today (by memory)...this is unheard of. Usually I memorize my song at the recital itself. They have this little piano upstairs.............

I'm playing The Easy Winners, by Scott Joplin. It's pretty cool, although playing 5+ minute rag wears on your arms.

The Evangel University Garage Sale "starts" tomorrow. By "starts," I mean that the helpers involved with the garage sale start to clean out the dorms and sort different items. It's an event that lasts till Tuesday evening. Then on Wednesday, the sale REALLY starts. The nice thing about working and helping out is that if you see something you want while items are being placed out in the gym area, you can grab it and set it aside, purchasing it on Tuesday...so you basically get first pick on stuff. I can only help on Saturday, since I have a large amount of school to do in the next two weeks.

Speaking of school....I have two english papers (one of which is for the final) and two calc tests (one of which is the final) to do within the next 2 weeks. Oh. Boy.

Oh, and I got a grade back on my Research Paper...an 85%...not so good. I mean, It's okay, but still not what I wanted. I had NO grammatical or syntax errors, only an apparently total mis-understanding of what "research" is...*sighs*...

SHEM recap, and the next week in preview..

The SHEM convention is over. A rumor I heard from a board member said that there were between 1350 and 1500 attendees at the convention. Those numbers are up slightly from last year. The convention this year did not seem to be nearly as busy and packed, at least at the registration table...

Friday night, I "graduated." Sort of. Mom and Da handed me my diploma, but it was unsigned. My Da stated that before they would sign it, I had to "finish my school, including American Government and Spanish 2." So technically, I'm not graduated. And I have no excuse to skip on those classes either. ;)

Saturday at the convention was fairly boring for me. I got reassigned to the back loading dock of the convention hall. There were some parking issues that I had to make sure didn't occur. I spent over 10 hours back there, mostly by myself. The take-home calc quiz got worked on quite a bit. O- lent me his laptop, so I was able to goof around on that for awhile too...Basically the day was slow, until about 5:00. Then the vendors on the lower floor started to pack up, and pull their vehicles around to the back loading dock. I ended up being the loading dock "manager," directing traffic and assisting with loading and parking. That was fun! Not extremely labor intensive, but mentally nervewracking a few times.

My next english paper is due on Thursday, and I have a Calc test on Tuesday. My paper is nearly done, except for re-writing the first paragraph, and doing some editing. I'm fairly well studied for my Calc test too....this week should be fairly easy. EXCEPT for the fact that my mom's sister and her husband are coming for a few days this week. AND I have a piano recital this weekend. AND the annual college garage sale that my family always helps at is this weekend. I sense tiredness coming on. :)

Laterz...

My life, as you know it.

Hmm....apparently it's been a while since I've blogged! Per request from a few friends, I will resume blogging, at least for this post...

My life begins right after the last post ended....and continues to this day. I shall attempt to fill you in on the large details...

No major repurcussions occured as a result of my accident. I still get pretty sore from time to time, and I am just starting to be able to rebuild my strength. But other then that, I'm okay.

The insurance company ended up giving us $3500 for the totalled vehicle. We bought a 2000 Buick Century with that money.

Other then that, my life has been filled with school and applying for various scholarships, etc. I did not recieve Drury's or Missouri State's Highest Academic scholarship. I had to interview for both of those, and neither school selected me. I do, however, get all my tuition paid for at MSU, and the Bright Flight Scholarship, which equals $2000 a year, until next fall, when it will be $2500 a year.

I recently found out that I had missed the deadline to join the Honors College at MSU. I sent them an email requesting an extension, and they granted it. So my Honors College Acceptance letter is in the mail, on the way to MSU.

I just found out today that I am one of two recipients for the SouthWest Home Education Ministry Scholarship, given by the Community Foundation of the Ozarks. The award is worth $500, and is deposited into the student account of the University you attend. So..that'll pay for some meals and books and what not. I'm pretty happy about that one. I really didn't expect to get it. Praise the Lord!!! :)

2nd Tuesday in May I'll find out if I was awarded the Medical Explorers Scholarship. Only one of those is awarded per year, and it's also worth $500. I would absolutely love to get both of those scholarships. :) One down, one to go. :) If I get it, it will be good news in the midst of finals week.

Yes, finals week is approaching. I have 2 and a half weeks before finals week. I believe as of 3 weeks from tomorrow, that I will be done with this semester. I have a graduation this Friday, at the SHEM convention. I am also planning a Senior Recital, to take place at the end of May. That will really be my "graduation, it's all done and over - finally" celebration.

So...english papers seem to be my problem this semester. I procrastinate FAR too long, then I slap something together that I don't have time for, and I get bad grades. B and C so far this semester, in fact. I turned in my research paper last week, which is worth double any other paper. I hope that it goes better then my past papers. :)

Of course, SHEM is up and coming. I am volunteering as a page yet again, with my two younger sisters. I love the work. It puts me around people, yet still gives me the opportunity to move around and not be stifled. Plus, as one of the older young men involved with volunteering, I have a lot of responsibility generally placed on me, something I greatly enjoy. Well, for limited amounts of time, anyway. And in novel places and with novel things.

Well, I think I have just about written down all I can for now. Look for another blog post in a "country" month! (ie, 2-4 "real" months).