it is official...i have prepared and delivered my first official lesson using a lesson plan. this means, i planned out objectives that i wanted my students to accomplish by the end of the lesson and i had a script, mapping out what i was going to say and questions i was going to ask. as expected, things did not go as expected...but i am glad things turned out pretty well. of course, this experience will unquestionably be different from the regular school year, as i was only teaching 3 students, rather than 30-40 kids. i feel like one of my strengths right now is being able to teach in small groups, like tutoring is no prob, but when i get a room full of rowdy kids that are at different levels of content knowledge with different learning styles...my mind's still trying to wrap around how to organize and effectively teach in this situation.

happy moment of the day:

at the beginning of the lesson:
student: mr. chen, i hate math.
me: why?
s: because it's hard.

by the end of the lesson:
me: how was this lesson?
s: it was easy!
me: yea right? math is easy.
s: yea, i guess so.

however, he then went on to sleep through the rest of the day because he was upset at me because i wouldn't let him go on the computer. gaegeageagea.

so i dunno if anyone's going to believe me, but i've been having this on-going dream for the past few months and each dream seems to have been an episode in a long sequence of dreams. but for some reason, when i'm in my dream, i do not remember having woken up from my dream for the past 12 weeks, so each time i'm dreaming, i'm literally feeling like i've been in the dream world for 12 weeks...kinda like groundhog day. and during the day, i sorta forget about the dream that i had, but for some reason, i remember today. last night was finally the culmination of all the dreams, sorta like a series finale (so i'm hoping that there will be no more dreams), and i woke up today thinking finally, it's over. does this sound weird to anyone?

now that i think back on the dreams, the details are kinda hazy, but i'm going to try and write down as much as i can so i don't forget. so in the dreams, i've been in two summer camp sessions (kinda like two seasons to the dreams, to continue with the tv metaphor), but these two seasons occur right after each other. what sticks out in my mind with the first session of camp was that there was a huge mystery. like, there were these three spiritual beings: one evil, one good, and one not sure (who was sorta like the chosen one). i was friends with the chosen one and he had this key that somehow locked a passageway to like, an evil portal dimension thingy. so at camp there would be adventures of searching for this emulate and the season finale culminated in a battle between all three spiritual beings and the chosen one trying to lock the portal. so i thot i was just observing this whole thing, but in the end, i think i realized that i was the chosen one and that i had to lock the portal. i remember, through the whole thing, that i was extremely depressed because i thot i had been stuck in a dream for so long and that in real life, i was in a coma or something. so i finally succeed where i lock the passage to evil and so i think, ok...this dream is over, i've finished what  i was supposed to, and i'm ready to wake up from this....but i don't!

so within the dream, the next day i wake up to the beginning of another summer session. and now i'm like, seriously depressed thinking that i'll never wake up from this dream. but i think to myself, ok...i just need to find the key again and lock the portal and do the same exact things and this session will be over. but, the key and the portal weren't in the same place as they were the last time. so we had to go find them all over again. this dream gets kinda weird now bc for some reason, i remember other people coming into the dreams. i remember dave driving me around and meeting ky and roger to eat. and then at the very end of the dream, i was at ky, roger, and john's apt and i'm like telling all the people in my dream that i've been stuck in the dream world for a really long time. most people didn't really believe me and didn't want to listen to me. i remember some people turning up the volume of the tv so they didn't have to hear me talk. so a few were listening...i dunno y i remember, but it was like tim, marian, dave, ky, roger, and shuey. and i asked them if they remember what i'm doing in the real world, like if i'm in a coma, but they all said that it's only been one day, so they don't know if they just didn't see me during the day or something. i was like...balling at this point bc i thot i'd never be able to get out of these dreams. i dunno how this happened, but we're then transported to an NU football game, where we're standing beneath the bleachers next to a fire (bc it's really cold). and i see these policemen directing traffic to my left and the game going on to the right. and i remember standing next to tim to watch the game.

and today...i woke up actually remembering my dream and thinking...oh man, this has been so ridiculous. how can i think that i've been in the dream world for the past 12 weeks in a row. so i'm hoping that if i have this dream again i can remember being awake and i won't think i'm stuck in this weird world forever. man...this is by far the weirdest thing that's happened to me.

so the last few weeks at the office have actually been really nice. i don't know if it's having an end in sight, or if i'm starting to get more comfortable with my co-workers, or if it's actually beginning to do work with my co-workers instead of doing everything myself. in talking with some of them during my "farewell lunch" i got a few interesting comments.

1. "man, i can't believe your leaving after 3 months. it took me 3 months just to get adjusted to the company. i can't believe they expected you to adjust to the company while actaully completing a study." i was surprised when i heard this because i thot i was supposed to adjust quickly, meaning after the 2-3 weeks of training, i should be ready to go and fully functioning as a contributing member of the research team. but there were so many times when i felt lost, not knowing what to do, not wanting to do these repetitive experiments (literally...i would do the SAME thing every week). and now as i'm leaving, i'm begnning to realize that i think i have finally adjusted to this work environment, to the people, and to the work that i am doing, so it's kinda sad that i'm leaving.

2. "i'm surprised they expected you to work all by urself, with little to no research background, and dive into this study." meeee too. haha, i knew that i needed more guidance with someone next to me explaining what i was doing and why i was doing it. i guess karen (my predecessor whom's project i am completing) was able to show me what she was doing and was trying frantically to teach me, but she spent 90% of the time showing me where reagents were, only to have them ALL moved around due to an internal audit. i guess i expected a lot from myself, but i realized they didn't expect much from me at all.

3. "shawn [a co-worker] told karen that one of the steps in your procedure would de-nature your protein." gaegeageagea. so this whole time my experiment has been completely reliant on the functionality of that protein. it was my final experiment to test the potency of my protein after that very step in my procedure (sorry i'm being so vague) and determined that it was no longer functional. and shawn goes to amy (two co-workers), yea...i explained that to karen a few months ago. man...so i was spinning my wheels for nothing. all this time and money wasted on something that shawn already knew. all the money they spent paying me (thousands of dollars) on top of all the reagents i purchased (thousands of dollars...ironically the protein being the most expensive) to find out nothing.

4. so i said, "i don't think any experiment has worked right for me while i was here at baxter." and amy said, "yea, i think that's how it is with exploratory research. you're doing so much crazy sh*t that you spent so much time trying to figure out what was going wrong." man...i seriously thot i was cursed bc nothing ever went right, but i guess that's just how things go. this made me feel so much better, like i'm not a complete failure.

some things i've learned...

1. soooo much gossip. but i don't know...whenever someone came over to me to complain about someone else, i felt included. of course i didn't have anything bad to say about anyone else, because they were all far more competent that i was, but i learned that gossip is a HUGE part of office culture. there was a huge phone conference that my co-workers called into, but they forgot to mute their microphone. they spent the whole time making fun of other people in the group, so there was this idle talking noise behind all the presentations being made. it was really funny.

2. so much time is wasted waiting on other people. i don't know how many days i was stuck doing nothing because my reagents did not arrive on time (shipping problems) or i was waiting on another group to finish their work before i could get started. one time, i had to send a report in by saturday night, so i wanted to get it done in the morning so i didn't have to worry about it the rest of the day, but for some reason, the baxter email system wouldn't allow me to send such a large file at the time. so i used my gmail and sent it to my boss's boss's boss, where he replied, "i appreciate your desire to get your report into me on time, but next time wait until monday and send it to me." and i was shocked because i'm so used to deadlines in college where you have to turn in your report on a certain day and time. i guess there is a little more leeway. ironically, we had a phone conference 2 weeks later and i found out not only did he never get to reading the report, he deleted it from his email.

3. so much money is wasted in research. like...money spent buying things that we realize later that we don't need. or things expire and you can't use it anymore.

4. i'd rather be busy with things to do than bored out of my mind with nothing. those days with nothing to do dragged on soo long. like...can u imagine, 8 hours of nothing to do? or sometimes i'd finish a step in my experiment and the next step was to wait 24 hours to let a reaction to occur. it would be 9:30am and i'd be technically done for the day. i guess this is where you take the initiative and ask other people if they need help, something i got to doing later when i got more comfortable with my co-workers. i wish i started this earlier. on days when i have experiments going on all the time, 5pm comes really quickly. at the end of the day i'm tired, but i guess i get to leave feeling like i accomplished something.

ok...my brain's fried. onto the next step in life i guess.

for those who keep asking why badminton is an olympic sport. i dunno y it shows up weird here...but tennis is on the left and badminton on the right.

Tennis	Badminton
Time duration:	3 hours 18 minutes	1 hour 16 minutes
Ball/Shuttle in play:	18 minutes	37 minutes
Match intensity:	9%	48%
Shots:	1004	1972
Shots per rally:	3.4	13.5
Distance covered:	2 miles	4 miles