First Days of PhD

There comes a time when oatmeal just doesn't cut it, and this is not that time.

Oct. 29, 2012
- Class: plants' endogenous factories of insect repellant
- A few leaky Sandy clouds send students fleeing off campus, to haul home super-sized packs of bottled water from downtown markets
- Classes, and my five-hour lab and final exam, are cancelled abruptly
- Graduate students scurry back to lab to save essential equipment
- First-year graduate students return home, act scholarly
- Read, write, tea - reflect, research, more tea - forget tea, rewrite
- Break to consider how the storm may affect grass: waterlogging of roots, reduced photochemistry, anoxic signaling, a dash of cytokinins?
- Emerge from cave, see life
- Return hastily to cave

Oct. 30, 2012
- Class: drought stress and plant memory (they never forget...)
- Enjoy free pizza, not from the annual blood drive
- Bike drippily home, walk bike into house; roommate X is mopping
- Resume scholarly productivity
- Consume emergency cookies

Classes began in August, thus this entire adventure should be labeled "First Days of PhD Beginning with Hurricane Sandy, When Time Magically Reappears, Moving at a Digestible Pace"