3 PhD's and a Grad Student

so, i just came from my unofficial committee meeting. it's a little intimidating, being in a room with 3 PhD's firing ideas at you like there's no tomorrow. and my future committee is growing. i think that 2 more profs got added to my committee today, but they won't be involved in things until my project is definite...and now i have so much more to think about, i'll go nuts trying to decide what i want to do. so many possibilities...too many options is definitely a bad thing for me. my already huge idea has morphed into something even more monstrous, and now i have to whittle it down and make sense of things. tim, anne, and dr. v. are all gathering more info for me, which i guess is good. and they brought up good points that i hadn't thought about (like the problems with studying different populations of the same species when there's so much variation among them). they also gave me some good avenues for library research that i haven't looked at. systems i hadn't considered (like Arabidopsis, the fruit fly of the plant world [if you're not a biologist, you probably don't get that, but oh well] and tobacco) to compare my seagrass to. and anne had a really interesting idea that had never crossed my mind - looking at detoxification mechanisms in the herbivores (urchins, parrorfish, limpets) after ingesting defended plants. hmm...

i shudder to think what that meeting would've been like if i hadn't been in a room with people i've known for years. being a grad student at a new university must be hard...you wouldn't know anyone. you'd have absolutely no idea what to expect. yikes. it's good to know people. yes, connections = :)

another good thing that came from today's meeting: i get to do some work over the summer :) extreme yay! i had no idea how much i missed research until the prospect of doing some preliminary stuff this summer filled me with pure joy today. oh my god. i just read that and realized what an extreme nerd i am. but i don't care. and there are all these possibilities of awesome places i can go...belize, the turks & caicos, the florida keys. and they're all warm and gorgeous. *big fat grin* and the best part - i'll not only not have to pay a dime for the trip(s), but i'll get paid for going. sweet. but those places probably won't be this summer. for now, i'll probably just make the 5-hour drive to port st. joe, which is also cool with me. and in a couple of weeks, i'll be training a new student in the assays i was running for anne when i worked in her lab...so that's more research-related stuff for me to do. it feels good to be thinking about doing something. it makes me happy. and it's warm today...and it'll be warm tomorrow...and the next day. have i mentioned that i love warm weather? i can't wait for summer. next week is spring break...maybe it'll be warm, and i can just go to dauphin island and hang out at the beach for a week. that sounds good. nice and relaxing. makes me happy just thinking about it...