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Thursday and Friday was spent in Madison at the ‘mini conference’ that my hearing science professor set up for us first year grad students. The Point students had to travel to Madison for Thursday and Friday. We were put up in a nice hotel and spent the majority of the day Thursday and Friday on the Madison campus touring different labs.
We got lots of free food and got to bond with our Madison counterparts. We (and by all of the ‘we’s’ I mean, us Point students) had only gotten to meet the Madison students one previous time at the beginning of the school year for orientation. Well, Katie got to hang with them a few weeks ago at a Special Olympics thing, but Amy and I couldn’t go. In any case, it was a great time! We all got to hang out after the lab tours and get to know each other better. We all get along pretty well and with there being only ten of us, its definitely not too bad! I’ll definitely say everyone has their own unique quality, but I’m sure everyone there is saying the same about us three Point students, so oh well.
We got to tour eight different labs on the Madison campus. I hadn’t been to that campus since the beginning of my senior year in high school when I toured it trying to decide where I would end up. I got accepted to Madison for my undergraduate degree, however chose to go to Point instead because it was smaller (and then got accepted to Madison again for my doctorate degree- because Point and Madison have the joint AuD program). Anyways, I totally forgot how big the campus is! It is really nice, but definitely NOT for me! I like Point, the ‘smallness’ of it… it’s big enough for me, and yet small enough for me to remain mostly anonymous.
It was a long two days, but fun! We also gave our presentations and after thinking I did okay on mine, okay enough to get at least an A-, maybe a B+ at the lowest and was really surprised and happy to find out I got a 98/100! Score! And extra credit for turning in some notes from the other presentations so that definitely will help with the grade (at least a little bit), although I’m not too overly concerned about it.
Thursday night the students got to go out to eat (courtesy of the campus) and chill. It was really nice getting to sit down with each other and get to know everyone a little better! Great time! And then Katie and I hit up the hotel pool and hot tub after we got back to the hotel… that was pretty nice too, lol!
Of the eight labs that we got to see… my favorite one was the mouse lab. It was about the cochlear nucleus, which was pretty cool because that was what my presentation was about. Anyways, one cool part was being able to ‘inject’ some current into a single cochlear nucleus cell! OMG, that was so cool! Even though we didn’t really do anything other than push the mouse button, lol! The lab tech had everything set up for us by the time we got there. But the best part was getting to see an actual cochlear nucleus, cochlea, and the semicircular canals of the mouse brain! Talk about tiny! But SO cool! And then the best part was when the lab tech took a live mouse and dissected the brain out. Okay, so the actual killing of the mouse (it was a tiny baby one who was super cute) was sad. None of us watched that part, but it was nice to hear that the lab tech was kind of spiritual about it and said goodbye to the mouse and what not before killing it.
I had to keep telling myself that it was just a mouse and that if it were in my home I’d have no problem setting a trap to kill it and get it out. But they were so cute, lol! Okay, so we just tried to ignore the fact that when the lab tech was cutting into the mouse brain that it was alive just seconds before. It was pretty easy. Does that make me morbid? Lol! But watching her find everything and show us was SO cool!
We got home at a decent time last night… managed to get some cleaning done which was good. I had a whole list of things that I wanted to get done this weekend… still have a few things on that list, but the majority of it is done!
Mostly caught up with laundry too… seems to be my nemesis these days!
Today was Ayden’s second soccer game. I thought it was going to get cancelled because it was raining this morning, but they kept it going. It had stopped raining for the most part by the time it was his turn, and then rained for just a bit during the actual game. He is on a pretty decent team this year… he is probably the most timid one on the team. Their team won again which was good because Ayden was proud. He had a few good kicks during the game, but I had to apologize to Jay during the game because as of now it looks like Ayden has gotten my athleticism, lol! We’ll see though! I hate playing most sports… I’m not very good at them and don’t really care for the uber competitiveness that comes from some people. But that’s just me…
After that headed to the bank and to run some errands and came home. I headed to Kohls this afternoon because I’m wanting a new dress for a wedding Jay and I are attending this summer, a new dress for Jay’s graduation party, and maybe a new dress for my brother’s graduation party… and alas I haven’t found one that I liked, lol! But I did have a 15% off coupon burning a whole in my wallet and couldn’t pass up the following cute shoes!
I don’t think of myself as a uber shoe collector, but I do have to say that I have quite a few pairs, lol! But I wanted a cute pair of tennis shoe like shoes that I didn’t have to tie! I hate wearing shoes in the first place, but hate having to tie shoes even more and so these ones are perfect! And they were on sale, doesn’t that count?!
On the agenda for tomorrow… more relaxing and procrastinating on studying, you know finals are fast approaching! Only TWO more weeks of class… OMG! Really?! Can’t wait!
CIAO! LOVE ME!
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