"Summer" Has Ended

In a mere 2 days, I start my academic career as a graduate student! I'm so excited I can't even describe it! As y'all know, I've been working (playing with fungal structures) in the Carbone and Payne labs for almost 2 months now. My first project is still on hold - harvest is in 3 weeks. Not to fear my dear, I have a second project. It has to with molecular genomics, crossing strains of Aspergillus to find a sterile sclerotia that we can use as the next generation biological control...that starts tomorrow. I'm the furthest thing from a molecular fungal geneticist but hey, I'm getting paid to go to school so there is no room for complaining on my part. "Summer" may have ended academically, but I don't think that Sun got the memo :)

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”  -Marilyn Monroe

Anyways, there was a get together on Saturday to welcome the incoming grad students to the department. Got to say - it's a pretty awesome group! I also found a person who runs just as much as I do (and way more) so that's always a good sign for me!! On the other hand, I have two orientations before classes start on Wednesday. First and foremost, tomorrow morning is the departmental orientation. Tuesday is the whole graduate school orientation. I'm not really sure what the difference is but I guess I'll let y'all know in time.

I am not a plant geek. Not even close. Sorry for the misleading "Life as a PlantPath Girl"

Then Wednesday...the big day! Ha, kidding. It's just classes - the best benefit of having a degree in Plant Pathology from Madison is that I have a really strong background in my field and can skip all the "This is a plant pathogen that makes plants sick!" stuff and launch into the in-depth information. As much as an easy semester would be nice, I want a challenge and to learn something cool. After all, NCSU has to compete with Madison and I took some of the most amazing and eye-opening classes at Madison. I know I've joined The Pack and all but I have Badger blood and I'm 100% certain that no matter how hard they try to make me a Wolfpack fan...I'll always be a Badger at heart! Anyways, my classes are looking pretty standard for first semester:

PP 501 - Biology of Plant Pathogens

PP 502 - Plant Diseases: Methods and Diagnoses

PP 506 - Epidemiology and Plant Disease Control (seems the most promising to be my favorite since I'm working on biocontrols)

PHI 816 - Research Ethics

Hopefully next semester I can take the Permaculture course and Tropical Plant Pathology :)

"Love is not an emotion. It is your very existence." 
— His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

"Silence is sometimes the best answer" 
—His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV

 BEST NEWS EVER: ANNA IS COMING BACK TO THE USA!!!!! I KNOW IT'S OVER FOUR MONTHS AWAY BUT I'M SO EXCITED!!! ALL I CAN SAY IS THANK GOODNESS FOR SKYPE :)