I'm Going Crazy

You do not want to be around me right now. It seems I'm going through a really bad episode of "The Crazies." One minute, I just want to break down and cry and the next I want to bash a wall to a fine dust. These are the days I end up playing The Foo Fighters (a long time ago, it was Stone Temple Pilots) on my mp3 player at full volume, earbuds in my ears, just to drown everything else out.

Things just aren't too great for me nowadays. I need to make 3 more proteins for my dissertation, get those into the mice and do the immuno work. I also have to do biophysical/biochemical tests on all my 7 proteins to get concrete structural information on them. Up until yesterday, I was getting nowhere on any of these things. I couldn't purify ANYTHING from my 300 ml prep for my first deletion mutant. Then after purifying my second mutant and running my fractions on a gel, I ripped the gel in half as I was putting it into stain! At the time, I thought the rip went right through the lane I expected to contain my protein. Thank goodness I had pottery last night, or else I might have really hurt someone. As for the structural stuff, that's a complete bust too. My protein won't unfold. Or maybe, it's already unfolded, which would just be a disaster for my project.

[And of course, to make things worse, I got on the scale today and found out I gained 5 pounds. Asin sa sugat na talaga!!! (Why I got on that scale this morning, I can't say. Parang masokista ata ako.)]

I'm starting to have panic attacks thinking I'll never finish this PhD. Or at least, I won't be able to finish by May and then they won't renew my J1 Visa since I'm already on an extension and I don't think they give you a second one. Stupid Fulbright! It's really been more of a bane than a boon for my life as a grad student.

Next Wednesday, I have my prospectus meeting where I show my committee what I've done and they tell me how much I have left to do. Parang sentencing. Let's hope things go well.