Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.

Category: Long Reads

Stories that take a bit longer to get through.

  • Hissy Fit

    Tess, my desktop computer, decided to throw a complete hissy fit yesterday. She’d been PMSing for the past several weeks, giving me random BSODs and refusing to boot into Windows properly post-catastrophe. Yesterday after one of these episodes she outright refused to turn on, prompting me to go on a mad scramble to purchase a…

  • Welcome to Web 2.0

    If you haven’t heard about the Elliott Spitzer debacle, the brief summary is that he’s both the governor of New York and a frequenter of a classy prostitution ring. Since the story broke, he’s been disgraced and resigned yesterday. What’s making me smile sardonically this morning, however, is not the developing situation so much as…

  • Not a Bad Day at All

    Today was one of those days that makes me feel pretty good by the end of it. This was largely because my Spanish exam, which had been looming grotesquely overhead for the past week, was suddenly canceled a mere hour beforehand. I got to spend the reclaimed time with some excellent people before heading in…

  • Research Worries

    I have been working hard on the guinea pig brains over the past week-point-five and it’s getting close to my next moment of truth. This Sunday while Rachel is at work I’m going to come in and run a Western and see what kind of stuff comes out the other end of the five-hour procedure.…

  • Headshot

    I got to go shooting for the second time in my life today at a range owned in part by one of Rachel’s and my friends. He’s got an amazing collection of weapons both modern and historical and as a result Rachel and I got to work a variety of firearms. We tried out three…

  • Running the Race

    Pre-med students are, by nature, competitive. There is room for debate on whether it is the stressful path that makes us this way, or if it is our personalities that direct us to take the path. Either way, the result is that we spend an awful amount of time comparing ourselves to others (especially other…

  • Found My MAP

    UMBC has this interesting little subsection on the student portal called “My Academic Profile,” or “MAP.” This page is supposed to display your progress through completing the General Foundation Requirements (GFRs) the university requires before they will allow you to graduate. The caveat? They never update the darn thing, largely because the inane system requires…

  • Ready to Cure Cancer?

    Even before I began my research position, I have frequently heard people of many different areas of focus, science majors included, talk about “curing cancer.” The implication is that somehow, it would be possible to find a treatment or technique that would be able effectively eliminate the phenomenon. This assumption is extraordinarily frustrating to me…