Research

One of the things pre-med students have to do in order to look good on a med school application is independent research. Lots of medical schools out there are notoriously known for their research, and they want to be able to see students with some experience in it. So some of them make it a requirement, like the one I'm applying for here in my town.
My cell biology class is taught by the Biology Dept head at my community college. That guy is a genius. He's a really good professor and is very efficient at teaching. He's been teaching cell bio for like 20+ years, so I'm told, and this semester he got into a research project and puts us all to work with (for!) him.
The research is on this bacteria that was just found in Puerto Rico that needs to have its whole genome mapped. That would be about 3.9 million nucleotide pairs. Except we can't get through 3.9 million in one semester, so we have to do only 1% of it, so 50,000 nucleotide pairs. As a class, we mapped the genes, then our professor took a concensus of all our maps and made a hypothesis map. Then he assigned each of us 3 of those genes, then we research it and see if it really is a gene, and what is it..  We finally make a report of it and if we are right and we get a good score on it, our name gets published with the work. SO COOL!!!
I think I'm the only one that thinks it's cool, though. From what I hear, the rest of my class hates it :( Maybe I'm just cut out for doing research as a doctor? I dunno. Bottom line is, he offered us to do this as independent research next semester and I totally want to do it, although I won't be a student at the community college anymore. I think it'll be a great research experience! And it helps that I'm interested in genetics, which makes the whole experience worthwhile for me.
Oh and did I mention the other school that's mapping the same genome (starting from the opposite end, however) is Johns Hopkins? That's even better :)

So now that I'm caught up to this point of what I'm doing in my life right now, I think I'll start the diary part of this blog and that's what I'll do until I either 1) quit, 2) forget about it, or 3) die. haha