Since I have last talked to you, many things have happened. In early March I went on Spring Break to Las Vegas with 7 of my best friends here at JMU. It was truly an experience, much different from anything that I have ever seen here in Harrisonburg. It was the perfect place to go to with you closest friends! But of course what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Recently, I have been accepted in to the Masters part-time Program for Advanced Biotechnology Studies at Johns Hopkins University. I can not tell you how excited I was to get that letter in the mail. Since the program is only part-time, I plan on finding a full-time job in the area of Homeland Security. This may be a lot for me my first year out of college, but I am confident that I can do it!

Next Friday, I will be presenting my Senior Thesis at the Symposium. I can not express to you how nerve racking this is going to be. Even though my lab partner and I have our paper finished, there is still a lot of stress on our shoulders. We have been getting together a couple hours each day to put together our presentation. Tomorrow night we are giving a practice run of our presentation in front of all the students that were working in lab this past summer. Hopefully the more I practice my speech, the better it will be and the more confident I will become in giving it.

Lastly, I can not tell you how happy I am that I choose JMU to be my college of choice as well as being an ISAT major. Yes, it has its ups and downs, but the experience and knowledge that I have gained I will take with me forever. I have met some of my closest friends while in ISAT. We have all struggled together as well as laughed together. If anyone is trying to decide of JMU is right for you, come and visit the school and I am sure it will win you over. ISAT is a great program for any individual with a keen interest in both science and mathematics. If you are unsure which path you want to choose, like I was, then ISAT is the perfect place for you. It gives you great understanding and skills in all of the areas and provides you with the necessary skills that you need to either go to grad school or enter the real world. The professors are magnificent and are willing to go out of their way to assist you in any way, shape, or form.

If you find yourself with any questions, my email is always available. I�??ve had a great time sharing my experience of ISAT with you, and I hope you enjoyed what I have had to say!

A little update on classes�?�
Last week was kind of crazy with 2 exams and a paper. So far my classes are going really well. In my genetics lab unfortunately our research is not going as well as we would like and for that reason we were forced to start our project over. That is the one downside to working in a lab - it is very time consuming and if results do not go as they are suppose to then you have no other choice but to start the project over. Hopefully we don�??t run into the same problems again. In my Health Ethics class we just recently took an exam, which I felt went pretty well, but we will have to wait and see.

ISAT update�?�
After the completion of each class at the end of the semester, the students are provided with forms to evaluate the professor and the class itself. Yesterday, the ISAT students, including myself, were placed into groups of 10 to discuss the ISAT program with the head of the department, Dr. Kander. I was very pleased with how this went, because it showed me that the professors honestly do care what we think of the program and ways that we can help improve it. We were able to discuss as a group the overall program as well as individual classes. Of course I can not repeat any of the information that was discussed in this meeting, but it just goes to show that the professors are continuously trying to find ways to improve the program for upcoming students. This really is a great program to be a part of. The professors are so incredibly understanding and helpful, and it is because of the ISAT program that I was able to meet some of my best friends in college.

Classes are going fine so far. It�??s nice to be able to enjoy a semester for once, rather than be stressed out about classes. Even though I am only taking 4 classes, I still have a lot of work to do for each of them. Last week I had my first exam in genetics. In my opinion the exam was extremely fair and I felt that I studied the correct material for it. Hopefully I did ok on it. This upcoming week I have 2 exams and a paper, all of which I am not ready for yet. My exams are in Medical Terminology and Values in Healthcare, and my paper is a case analysis which is also for my Values in Healthcare class. I have a bad feeling that I will be up sort of late tonight since my paper and one out of my two tests are tomorrow! YIKES!...

Sorry that it has been so long since my last blog. I will try to update it again as soon as I can and I will keep you posted on what is going on with me!.

Please feel free to ask me any questions that you wish!

Along with applying to graduate schools, I also have to keep up with my work for my classes. As I have told you before I am taking 3 classes + 1 lab + 1 Senior Thesis class. So far I am enjoying all of my classes. In Genetics, we are currently starting to prepare for our first exam, which is next week. Most of the focus so far in class has been on material that I have already learned in previous classes, which was a nice surprise, mainly involving the life cycle of cells. In my Genetics Lab, we are working with fruit flies. For this lab we are given mutant fruit flies along with wild type fruit flies and we are given the task of crossing them with one another so that in the end we can determine if the phenotypes from our mutant fruit flies are dominant or recessive, as well as autosomal or sex-linked. The lab itself is not very complicated but it is time consuming because it is done entirely on our own. My other classes are also going well so far. In Medical Terminology we show up once a week and take a test on medical terms so it is set up as a teach-yourself type class which I do not mind. And my last class is Values in Health Care which is based around the Ethical principles within health care issues. I have a paper due tomorrow that I must define what I consider is the most important core principle for Health care based out of: Patient Autonomy, Truthfulness, Maintaining Confidentiality, Doing What is Promised, Beneficence, Justice. Then I must define that term as my personal definition of the principle and how it will apply to my work after school. The paper only needs to be 2-3 pages but it will require some planning and thinking which I hope to finish sometime this afternoon.

Well I guess that is all for now! Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their week! Feel free to ask me any questions about my classes or applying to grad schools.

When scheduling for my classes this semester, I decided to go a bit easier on myself so instead of taking 20 credits like last I am only taking 13. I want to be able to enjoy the time that I still have with my friends here instead of worrying when I will be able to get all my work done. Today I have one class, Genetics, and the lab for that class. Looking at the classes that I will be taking I think this will be my hardest one, but hopefully it�??s not too bad. Along with Genetics I will be taking another class in Health Administration as well as Medical Terminology. This gives me a total of 10 credits. I am also registered for my Senior Thesis class, but the nice thing about that is my thesis is pretty much all done. All that my partner and I have left for that is to give our presentation in April. I am extremely excited that we�??ve finished the majority of our paper because that takes a lot of extra stress off my shoulders.

Well I hope everyone enjoyed their winter break. If you come across any questions please free feel to ask!

Later on this afternoon I will be meeting with my lab partner to develop a presentation that we will be giving to the class tomorrow. Our presentation will be on Rituxan, the first monoclonal antibody. Hopefully all will go well with that. Then later on tonight I will be spending most of my time studying for a quiz that I will be having at 9:30am tomorrow. As this week progresses, the work load only increases. As long as I can have my 2 papers done, it will relieve a lot of the stress that is on top of my shoulders right now.

Well I should probably get back to writing. Hope everyone is having a great week!

 
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Unfortunately break is now over and I�??m forced to face the real world of college once again. We only have 2 weeks of classes and 1 week of finals left till Christmas break. This may seem like a long time, but it�??s really not, especially for the amount of work that I still need to finish. So far I have 2 papers, 1 presentation, 2 quizzes, and 6 exams until I can officially declare the end of my semester. The thing that is going to be challenging is that my 2 papers and 3 out of my 6 exams all fall on the same day. I know that eventually all the work will get done, but it can become stressful. In order to tackle a situation like this you need to be able to manage your time wisely. My goal this week is to finish my 2 papers so that next week I can devote my time to studying for my exams. Of course this is all more easily said than done, but we�??ll see.

In other news, this past weekend JMU dukes defeated the Villanova Wildcats in football. This game was so much fun. The Duke Dog rode out at the start of the game on a motorcycle which was cool. Next weekend will be our last home football game of the season. I kind of don�??t want it to come because after that, it means winter is on it�??s way followed by spring... and with spring comes graduation. I guess you can�??t really think about that, but it�??s hard not to.

Here are some pictures from the Villanova Game:

  
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Another project that I am currently working on is for my Health Administration class. For this project we were placed into groups to analyze a real case involving a hospital. We are supposed to analyze the situation, look at how they decided to fix the problems and then provide our own recommendations on how we feel they should go about solving their problems. One thing that I have noticed, as I have progressed through college, is that the projects that I have been working on all involve real life scenarios in hopes to prepare us for the real world.

One piece of exciting news that I had just gotten yesterday involved my senior project. As most of you know I spent most of the summer here at JMU conducting lab research involving the DNA of anthrax and the purification of proteins in hopes to find a new vaccination. My lab partner and I applied for a conference down in North Carolina to present our research at the National Undergraduate Research Conference. We first had to submit our application to JMU and then JMU would decide who would be sent down to NC to represent our university. Amazingly, Nicole and I were selected which is an amazing honor. We were both thrilled when we received the email informing us of the good news.

Later on today I will be meeting with Nicole to finish up our senior thesis. We choose to write it this semester so that we don�??t have the stress about it next semester. I am so excited that we are almost done. Today we plan on writing our conclusion and sometime next week we hope to write our abstract. Once this is finished all we have left to do is edit the paper and make sure that everything makes sense and prepare our powerpoint presentation. A good thing about the conference that we will be attending in March is that if we need to prepare a powerpoint presentation, hopefully we can use the same one for our thesis and that will save us a lot of time and work. Well I better get going to my meetings!

Have a great weekend!

Work Load in Classes
In my epidemiology class, we have been working on case-studies. My professor has taken real life examples and has given us the challenge on determining on how to handle the different cases. We are suppose to determine whether the case is an epidemic, endemic, or pandemic; following this, we are suppose to analyze the case determining the attack rates as well as calculating other statistics that are normally done in the real world. After completing the calculations and graphs, we are to write a field report discussing our findings. It�??s actually a kind of interesting assignment. I always feel that when professors give us real life situations and we are to analyze them, I get more out of the exercise than I do if I were to read the text book. This has been the main project that I�??ve been working on and hopefully will finish it up sometime this weekend.

Something also occurred this week that I never though would. I scheduled my classes for my last semester here at JMU. I never thought that this day would come. When in college, you never really realize that there is life outside of JMU. I was looking over my transcript, trying to determine how many credits I still needed to graduate as well as what classes I was still required to take for my major. At JMU, you need a total of a 120 credits to graduate. Currently, I have 112 credits, but in order to become a fulltime student you need 12 credits. This was a huge decision for me, because of course I want to be able to enjoy my last semester of senior year since everyone always says, �??These are the best years of your life�??, but I still need to take classes that will prepare me for graduate school. I spent a lot of time talking with professors and discussing what classes they felt would be most beneficial to me. The classes that I decided on were: Bio224(Genetics), HSA365(Health Administration and Policy), HTH300(Medical Terminology) , ISAT 493(Senior Thesis), ISAT480(Independent Study). As you may recall this summer, I spent most of my time here at JMU working in the lab completing my internship. For this I did a lot of lab work involving Eukaryotic Expression Systems. For ISAT 480, I will be conducting research with a professor focusing on Bacterial Expression Systems which will be a great opportunity for me. Most students don�??t get this type of opportunity till their 2nd year of graduate work. It will probably be very time consuming, but in the end worth it.

This pretty much concludes my work for the week. This weekend will probably be quiet, filled with chicken noodle soup and movies! Talk to everyone sometime next week!

Thankfully, this week does not seem like it will be as hectic as the past week. No Exams + No Papers = A Good Week For Me.

By the way�?� HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I always love it during this time of year. The leaves are changing, the weather is cooler, and you get to watch scary movies all the time. Tonight for my Halloween plans, some of my friends will be coming over to my apartment for a little get-together. It should be a lot of fun hanging out with all my friends, in costume of course. I hope you enjoy your Halloween! Have a Spooky Day!

On a positive note, this is JMU�??s Homecoming Week which I am very excited for. Each night there is something special going on. Wednesday Sunset on the Quad will take place. It is during this event that all the acapella groups will perform. Friday, we will have our annual Homecoming Parade, followed by a pep rally which is always fun. And on Saturday is our football game. I�??m so excited for this upcoming weekend because a lot of my friends who graduated last year are coming back and I cant wait!

Before I can have fun, I must first get through this week with my 3 exams! Wish me luck!....

After finishing up my crazy day, I had a meeting for the Virginia Biotechnology Association (VABIO). During this meeting we had a guest speaker from Abbot Labs come to talk to us about his experiences in the Biotech field. It was very interesting hearing him speak about the FDA rules and regulations because last year I had a course here in ISAT taught by Dr. McKown about the Codes of Federal Regulation (CFR) as well as the regulations that must be followed. It was really cool being able to apply all the stuff I learned in class to issues that were going on in the real world.

I am so happy that finally this crazy week is coming to an end. But there�??s still one more day that I have to get through first. Luckily for me, I only have one class on Friday�??s. Though I do have a meeting with my senior thesis partner; it is during this meeting that we hope to have our introduction to our thesis completely done. Hopefully we will be able to accomplish this, and I have all the faith in the world that we will! After we finish this section, we hope to give it to our advisor so that he would have a time to read over and edit anything he feels should be changed. It�??s great that we are able to get this done now, because come time in spring when everyone is working on their thesis, we will be able to have ours finished and complete our senior year stress free.

Well that�??s all for now. So far I don�??t have too many plans for the weekend, so I hope to hang around and chill out for a bit before next week of craziness begins.

Here are the pictures from Howie Day

 
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Here are the pictures from Virginia Coalition (VACO)

  
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As you can tell from the pictures, my friends and I were as close as we possibly could be to the performers. It was absolutely amazing. It was awesome being able to watch Howie Day record his music in front of you and then play on top of it. By the end of the song it sounded like he had an entire band playing with. I also thought that VACO was unbelievable. They are one of my favorite groups and one of the reasons why I had so much fun there was because they played all the songs that I knew. My friends made a special request to them to play my favorite song because it was not on the set list and they did! Friday night I ended up going to another concert at The Pub. My roommate and I saw Mia Jones. She first came to JMU my sophomore year and opened for Phil Vassar. She did an amazing job as well. If you ever get the chance to see any of those performers perform, I highly recommend that you take the opportunity.

This upcoming week should be a lot work for me. On Thursday I have a huge exam in my Health Administration class. It will be one of my two exams that I have this semester so it is very important that I do well on it. Besides studying for that exam, my lab partner and I have decide d to have our introduction complete by Friday for our senior thesis paper. Since I decided to be a bum for most of the weekend, I�??ve been working on my introduction for most of the morning so that the rest of the week can be spent preparing for my exam. So far that is the major work that I know of that I have due this week, but I�??m sure throughout the duration of the week my professors will assign other work on top of what I already have due.

One of the cool things this week was I had the opportunity to put the skills that I acquired in lab into use in my class. My homework assignment for my Biotech Industry & Agriculture class was to find a gene of interest, and then based on the restriction sites for the gene, insert it into 2 vectors. Throughout this process we had to create our primers in such a way that we would order them from a company. Primers are necessary during the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) process. Basically this homework summed up what I did on my internship this summer so it was kind of neat being able to apply it to something different than within lab.

The other exciting things this week were the concerts I attended. Wednesday night, Howie Day came to perform @ Wilson Hall on campus. His show was incredible. I have never seen a performer record his music directly on stage and rerecord on top of it so that it would sound like there was an entire band. It was unbelievable. Then last night one of my favorite groups, Virginia Coalition (VACO) was playing at a bar off campus. Their show was AMAZING. They played till 1 A.M. because after they were finished playing their set list they just kept playing the songs that the audience was requesting. I was so excited when they played my favorite song, �??Hurricane.�?? I took a ton of pictures at the concerts which I will be sure to post on the website after I upload them on my computer

As for today, I have a quiz in my Epidemiology class, which I have to start studying for this morning because I didn�??t have time at all throughout the week. Hopefully it won�??t be that bad. After my class, a colonel from USAMRIID is coming down to our Biotech Lab to look at where we conducted all of our research this summer as well as to take some pictures of us working in the lab for a publication. So that is going to be really cool. After that meeting I have another meeting with Nicole, my lab partner from the summer. During this meeting we plan to start writing our senior thesis paper so that we do not have to worry about it during second semester of senior year. Well I should be going so that I have time to study for my quiz. I�??ll be sure to post pictures from the concerts next week!.. Hope everyone enjoys the weekend.!