Chromosomes

on Wednesday, July 1, 2009
I hated Genetics with a passion. I tended to dislike any kind of biology that is too small for me to see with the naked eye (which rules out genetics, cell, molecular bio, etc.) Staring into microscopes all day make me dizzy. This class sucked twice as much because it was during the dreaded winter quarter at SPU...January through March is not a pleasant time to live in Seattle. Only one word can explain it: BLAH. To make matters even worse, the class was at 8am. Which means, I had to walk to class everyday in the dark, cold, and rainy Seattle winter mornings.

Right after I graduated the hard drive of my laptop melted. I lost everything - all my hard work from college. Tonight I was scouring my room looking for a flash drive and I found an old 256mb stick. To my surprise, it contained some of my work from SPU! This is a chromosome that I took a picture with with a ridiculously expensive microscope/machine:



Because I was all too eager to throw out all my notes after my Genetics class ended, I don't know where this chromosome is from or how I got it. All I vaguely remember is that those red bands on them mean something, and mine didn't turn out nearly as pretty as everyone elses. My chromosomes were all tangled up while the others were nice and straight.

One of my worst classes in college was my last quarter of my senior year (same as Genetics, lucky me!) - Chemical Equilibrium and Analysis. A class all about equations and measuring things. It was as fun as it sounds. I have no tolerance when it comes to labs in general, but especially Chemistry labs. I have no 'technique'. Every good chemistry/biology major knows his/her way around the lab and is very cautious and keeps a steady hand. Most of them, after all, will be surgeons some day. I, on the other hand, am completely sloppy and careless. No matter how hard I tried, I never did anything right. I always poured a little too much in the beaker, heated it a little too fast, or blew something up. I made a beaker full of hazardous materials explode one time....my super genius lab partner wasn't too thrilled about that.

This is one of my lab write-ups that I found on my memory stick. This is proof that, at one point, I knew what the word 'spectrophotometric' meant. Check out those formulas. And those numbers, rounded to the nearest thousandth of a milliliter. Wondering what #DIV/0! means? It means MALFUNCTION! OVERLOAD! CRITICAL ERROR! The equations themselves are mocking me.

Spectrophotometric Determination of an Equilibrium Constant

Mixture Volume (mL) A Total volume (mL) [Fe3+]I [SCN-] [Fe3+]I[SCN-] A([Fe3+]+[SCN-]) A/[Fe3+]I[SCN-] A([Fe3+]+[SCN-])/[Fe3+]I[SCN-]
1 1.00 0.119 101 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
2 2.00 0.216 102 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
3 3.00 0.292 103 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
4 4.00 0.355 104 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
5 5.00 0.408 105 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
6 6.00 0.453 106 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
7 7.00 0.488 107 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
8 8.00 0.518 108 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
9 9.00 0.543 109 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!
10 10.00 0.564 110 0 0 #DIV/0! #DIV/0!

I look at things like this and think: WHY AM I GOING BACK TO SCHOOL!!!? I have to reassure myself that I never have to look at a chromosome again if I don't want to. Nor do I have to remember what element Fe stands for. IRON!! It's ingrained in me, I can't help it.

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