November 02, 2008
God has blessed me to live another year and today I am celebrating another birthday! I am turning 21 again 
For the past two weeks, I’ve been traveling and trying to keep up with the school gig. Last weekend I attended the Florida Education Fund’s “2008 McKnight Doctoral Annual Fellows Meeting” in Tampa, FL. At the meeting, I had the pleasure of interacting with dozens of African American scholars who shared their experiences of the graduate education process. One of the specific aims of the conference was to address issues pertinent to the needs of matriculating graduate students. With several panel discussions and workshops, I can honestly say that many of my needs were definitely addressed. I also had the opportunity to sit down and speak with the president regarding my shortcomings in school thus far. He listened very attentively and was able to hook me up with someone who is where I want to be in 8-10 years; a female who had successfully been through the process in my field! Read more…
October 24, 2008
I’m headed out of town for a weekend conference. For all of you who have been inquiring about the Strawberry Letters, please bear with me as I am just getting a handle on school. I have a lot to say but now is not the time to spill….look out for another post in a few days.
September 22, 2008
As of this week, I have been a PhD student for 5 weeks and it has NOT been easy. This semester, I am taking a core course which provides exposure to fundamentals of all of the disciplines represented by six advanced programs that the College of Medicine offers (Structural Biology, Molecular Biology, Genetics, Cell Biology/Cystoskeleton, Cell Biology/Transport, and Signal Transduction). So far I’ve completed the Structural Biology module of the course and the exam was last Monday. I actually received my test results a few hours ago and I did poorly (not the lowest in the class, but I could’ve done a lot better). I’m not feeling too down about my test because I know what I did wrong and I did not study as much as I should’ve. Additionally, I was under an immense amount of stress worrying about money and how I was going to eat everyday and how my bills were going to get paid. I had gone more than a month living here with no income! It’s very sad that there were no reliable resources to assist me (and others in the same situation). I finally received my first check Sept 12 and it was missing nearly a week of pay because of “technical errors”, but I was happy to receive it nontheless. My next exam is October 6, so I am definitely going to try to work more diligently to ensure that I understand all of the concepts. Hopefully, I’ll find a reliable person(s) to study with.
September 04, 2008
Unbelievably, I have only been in school for 3 weeks — it feels like it’s been a couple of months! Right about now I’m starting to regret the ~1.5 year break I took after receiving my undergraduate degree. I would have been waaaay better off if I had not done that because I am having THE hardest time getting back into the groove of school. At the job I was working at before I started the PhD program, I pretty much knew the ends and outs of what I needed to do on a daily basis. When it was time for me to go home, I went home and didn’t have to even think about the job again until the next workday. Usually, I was so tired when I got home that I would take a nice long nap and then wake up and casually watch TV or surf the net or even read some good fiction. But with school, I have to actually study in my free time. What-a-bummer. And mind you, I’m spending about the same amount of time I would in a full-time job in the classroom (8:30am - 5pm), so when I get home guess what? I am tired just like I have always been. And is some biochemistry book supposed to keep me up? lol! No, it hardly does. Maybe I’m just being lazy??? So I end up waking up ~12-3am after I’m rested (I woke up at 4:30am a few mintues ago) and doing what I can before the day starts. I know that it’s not very efficient at all, but I didn’t even have a chance to ease into this. It was just like BAM!
