Backlog

Just a backlog to run thru since Poster Day (omigawd, I was on sabbatical that long?!) :

• Poster Day

This final examination went pretty smoothly for me. Getting to the lobby early, all psyched up, standing by my poster, and waiting for the examiners to criticize my poster. Initially, I was more excited than nervous. I mean, it's a novel kind of 'examination' for me, and the whole poster presentation thing has such an air of 'research' I find refreshing from the paper examinations all my education life. That is until my poster neighbours started pacing around nervously and did little mock speeches. However, luck must have been on my side when my first examiner approached my poster, it's Dr. KCG! The tall, pretty, lovely and very nice lady who interviewed me during my PhD application. Seeing her relieved my fraying nerves and I began rattling off about my work as she patiently listens and nodded her head every now and then. In fact, she was so nice to the extent not much questions were asked about my poster.

Having Dr. KCG as my first examiner gave me a little more confidence about my work as I waited for the next examiner. Rumor has it that each of us will get two examiners, so I began wondering who the next one will be. An hour later, I found that he is no other than the plasmid cloning expert in our faculty... Dr. TT. Although Dr. TT is a very nice guy himself, I had a bad premonition because he's bound to be attacking my cloning strategy. Voila! I was right. Throughout my little speech, he quietly listened, nodded his head and made no sound. Which by the way, made me really nervous. After I thanked him for listening, he started bombarding me questions. He didn't gave me much time to think and the questions just kept coming and he appeared not satisfied with my justification of the strategy I adopted. In the end, I didn't want to build an argument with him, who is by far more experienced in cloning than myself, so I took all the bullets, unshielded. T_T

Nevertheless, I was relieved my poster examination was all over and I had the joy of watching my neighbours wrecking their nerves waiting for their examiners. Muahahaha. Well, it wasn't entirely all over for me because another professor came to my poster and started asking questions out of interest. It was a fruitful interaction with him because he is a FACS expert himself, and we exchanged ideas about my FACS data. It was quite funny because my neighbours were still agonizing for their examiners while I had 3 people questioning me already. But it was all fun.

The entire poster exam lasted about 3-4 hours, after which we had a lunch break before commencing the public poster session. Over lunch, me and my classmates exchanged stories of our examinations and who examined whose poster and all the nerve wrecking emotions. Sitting there sharing our stories, I felt a little nostalgic and a little sad... It would probably be the last time we sat together as classmates, having lunch and complaining about school work. Makes me feel like I'm really graduating. Four years ago, we were also sitting together eating lunch and wailing about the difficult tutorials and the mound of homework that never seem to end. Time really flies.

Anyway, the public poster session began after lunch and lasted for another 4 hours, but it took on a more relaxing mode. At least, I went on relax mode. There were people stopping by to scan my poster, but they usually move on pretty quickly as well. Kinda understood, because our works were pretty specialized and focused on a small area, so unless the audience is from the same area of research, it would be pretty much a totally different wavelength. However, I did have several interested 'customers' whom, much to my dismay, were particularly interested in my FACS data (generated within 2 weeks) over my 3-month work on the library. I supposed it can't be helped since the FACS plots looked prettier than bar charts. But one particular guy from the national hospital got really excited about my FACS data and he totally wore me out with his questions and excitement over the dots on the graphs.

Since most members of the public were just browsing, me and my friends took the opportunity to trawl around the lobby, snapping photos for a final piece of undergraduate memory. It was alot of fun catching up with them after cooping in the lab for one whole semester doing the project. By the end of the day, my back and feet hurt from standing the whole day, but I thoroughly enjoyed my final examination. ^_^

My poster #13

The 4 of us stuck together in the same tutorial group for 4 years
(resolution's bad, I know, sorry don't have photo editing tools)

• Sabbatical

After the Poster Day, I basically stopped thinking and just slept long hours (I didn't get to do that alot for the last six months you know). And then my little quarter-life crisis began. I returned to my hometown, then came back to Sg for a symposium jointly organized by the school and RIKEN, after which I immediately went back home again for a holiday in Tokyo (which I will blog separately). After returning from Tokyo, I was still in my crisis and finally came back to Sg to sort out my life and do some shopping (hey, it is the Great Singapore Sale after all). Now I'm still continuing to sort out the remaining stuff and will head back home for another brief sabbatical before returning back here to commence my PhD.

So basically I've been standing still after graduation, but I finally see where I'm about to head for. I'll be convocating this July 23rd, officially bringing my undergraduate days to a close and from there on the wheels of the next part of my life will start to turn (darn... it's starting to sound like Honey & Clover).

Happy Convocation, Class of 2007!

～みはる～