(Glass) Blown Away!

This year, I spent about a month of my summer on the East Coast to work with my professor at the marine labs over in Woods Hole. Given its proximity to Boston, I was able to spend a lot of time with my partner, including celebrating our one year anniversary together (♡ yay!). I posted here the scrapbook I made as a gift, but his gift to me was just as, if not even more special. For ages, I’ve wanted to give glassblowing a try. It’s one of those art forms that really capture my heart, and the technique involved is so unique. And it’s no surprise to those around me that I love it, heck, back a little before the pandemic, my dad and I binge-watched a glass blowing competition show, only further fueling my desire to attempt it. So as an anniversary present, Alex surprised me by taking us glassblowing. Talk about heart melting like sand in the glassblowing furnace!



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Recording Joy – September 2023

After recent car, financial, and big life decision issues, I’ve been struggling with extremely heightened anxiety. I notice that even little things I’m normally fine with have been putting me on edge lately. I’ve decided to combat this by bringin’ back a practice that kept me sane during the early days of the pandemic: journaling.

Recently, I’ve learned about myself that I do better by speaking or writing my feelings to figure them out. I’ll wonder why something has upset me or made me uneasy, only to have that little alone-in-the-car, self argument enlighten me. But rather than dwell on the negative, I think making a concerted effort to focus on the positive may be beneficial.



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Interactive/Pop-up Scrapbook

What happens when you can’t give gifts like normal people? You make them like a goofy person, of course! I don’t really know where I was going with that. I just want to share a sorta ridiculous present I put a lot of time, supplies, and effort into, with hopes of sharing the joy and maybe inspiration.

So, I needed to figure out a gift for Alex for our 1 year anniversary, but came across the challenge of having a grad school budget despite wanting a gift that really dazzled. I figured putting together a photo album was a great idea, but that didn’t feel like enough. I could design it to look professional on Shutterfly? I could paint the cover like I did here for my 2021 photo challenge? Hmmmm, maybe… But then it hit me– make a pop-up book. Have I ever made a pop-up book before, such that this would be a natural consideration? Nope. But as I’ve seen before with myself, I have a craftsy background and the queer audacity that I can make anything I put my mind to (and make a Pinterest board for). I rounded up ideas, made a lot of messes, and, what ended up being a few months later, I had my final project.



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Conditions Matter!

For practically the whole spring semester and up until recently, a few of my fungal strains have been acting up. It is quite distressing when an experiment you’ve done 10’s to 100’s of times suddenly stops working and you don’t know why. You’ve done everything the same as before, so what gives?! Fungi, being the funky little beings they are, sometimes do odd things if their spores have been in the fridge too long, passaged too many times, or even get a random mutation. We have stocks in out -80C freezer for this very purpose– to start from scratch, so to speak. I don’t vibe with non-fungal organisms, but I think similar things can happen to animal cell lines. I want to say some can lose specially-designed phenotypes, stop dividing, and become genetically unstable.



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Getting back to healthy

Before I begin, I want to put a little disclaimer on this post: This is me, this is something I have struggled with, and something I wanted to make changes in. Our weight and size have no bearing on beauty and who we are as people, there are inherent privileges society places on thin women, and health is not a one-size-fits-all. I decided to make changes for myself for reasons I will get into below, but I do not advocate others look at this post in any other way than “this person did a thing and felt like sharing it.”



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Book Review: Van Gogh: The Life

Artist biographies have long been a point of interest for me. As a child, I would always choose an artist for biography fairs and nonfiction book reports, and in my own free time I would seek out ways to learn more about what was behind the music I played and paintings I saw. Even going to museums and reading the info tag next to works was fascinating, especially when a wing is big enough that you can start to compose a story and timeline from the works themselves. Recently, though, with various new art installations popularized by social media and people in my life having interest, I got a surge of motivation to learn more about them once again. What possessed me, I don’t know, but Vincent Van Gogh in particular seemed like the right choice to study. Maybe it was how wacky his life seemed in books I read as a child, or when one of my brother’s used him as a biography fair and I got new, even odder snippets of information (like putting candles on the rim of his straw hat to paint at night, although this detail is more legend than fact). Not to mention, with true crime channels focusing on the circumstances of his death, I wanted to know more.



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Darwin’s Star Orchid

Today I want to share with you one of my favourite stories of co-evolution, and how sometimes the right answer can seem the most unlikely. For those of you who don’t know, Charles Darwin spent a lot of time researching orchids, to the point where he even published a book called Fertilisation of Orchids (or its full name, On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects, and On the Good Effects of Intercrossing). At the time, 19th century Europe just caught wind of orchids, and it was all the rage to collect them. Wealthy collectors payed hefty sums to purchase them from explorers who brought them back from tropical regions of the world. As they did not yet understand their reproductive cycle, which we now know requires fungi to grow from seed, the plants had to be taken and kept alive for long, often unfavorably cold voyages. Early terrariums, dubbed “Wardian cases,” were often used to protect the plants during these times. They dubbed this Victorian orchid-collecting phenomena “orchidelirium“.



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Photosynthetic Mycelium

I always joke with friends that fungi can do anything the scientist puts their mind to, or the opposite if they haven’t pleased the fungal gods that day. They’re also quite fun because they ruin the party when you get into those “what is a species” and “what is a cell” debates with people. Fungi honestly blur, cross, destroy, and defecate on those lines. They’re everywhere and they do what they want. Although maybe I shouldn’t say that, it makes them sound selfish when they also have potential to be very cooperative, generous, and communicative. We wouldn’t have this lush world colonized with land plants if it weren’t for the fungi aiding with nutrient intake and clearing old debris. But today I want to share something I personally found unique– photosynthetic mycelium.



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Chaotically Productive & Undulating Above the Curve

Last night, while procrastinating on studying for my upcoming immunology exam, I looked back at old planners I saved. Within them are a plethora of doodles, memories of events passed, and stresses over classes I’ve aced and haven’t thought about in years. But, what was interesting was how even as a high school student, a literal child, I still wrote down “completely unrealistic” goals for my day, at least for me. The desire for high productivity and consistency in practicing multiple skill-sets weighed on my mind (and still does, unfortunately). One of my desired summer day-plans looked something like: 5:20am wake up and stretch, 5:30am go for a run, 6:00am shower and get ready, 6:30am breakfast (only 200 calories max), 7:00am practice Spanish or Polish, 7:50am leave for pharmacy shift… followed by a full day of non-stop activity, you get the idea, I will stop it there. Did I achieve days how I planned them? Probably for no more than a couple weeks at absolute most. Now as a grad student, I laugh at the thought of actually carrying out a morning like that, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing I could.



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Shades of Polymathy

“Jack of all trades, master of none”— a colloquial phrase for someone with a variety of skills but none at a level of mastery. I even used it as my topic for my undergrad university entrance essay, talking about how I had a lot of skills that led me to my choice of major and how potential acceptance would allow me to eventually “master” one skill. In recent years, though, the “complete” saying made its way ’round the world wide web, “jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than master of one,” although from what I could find, the last part is actually a 21st century addition and is not originally part of the phrase. While a bit cheesy to see on Etsy prints, I really find value in the addition. It shows that there is inherent worth in having a wide skill or knowledge base over only knowing a sole topic. Personally, I think masters of one still have value and can help push fields into new frontiers, but, well, so can jacks of all trades, no? Why can’t you be a master of two? Or maybe a master of an interdisciplinary field? Or someone who masters things consecutively in fields with the same base skills? Or maybe you’re just really good at mastering things?



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