The views are beautiful, the people are great and the buses are free...so perhaps woeful is the wrong term to describe my general demeanor as a resident of this gorgeous place. We'll run with it anyway because of all of the sad phenomena that affect me: horrible winter air quality, increasing tuition rates, and the difficulty in procuring fresh vegetables 9 months of the year, to name a few.
My Master's project research is on the impact of the air pollution on human health. I collect and study human blood samples and compare it to results obtained from exposing petri dish cells to the same pollutants. My hobby 'research' projects include local and global feminism, soil science, nutrition and politics. All of these topics and more may come up in future blog posts. They'll probably be brought up in conjunction with one another.
In my personal life, the aspect most important to me is my family; namely my husband and our pets. I married my high school sweet heart, now a full-time grad student at the same university. My husband studies inorganic chemistry and has a disdain for biochemistry (which is silly because biochemistry is clearly the more interesting topic). His lab coat is much, much grosser than mine; likewise his lab bench. We are both massive science nerds who wear thick glasses and have poor fashion sense. I like him a lot! As for our menagerie, our little zoo includes a precocious puppy, a callous cat, and two grumpy goldfish. The trend has been to adopt a new pet or two every year: the puppy was rescued from the local humane society two weeks ago, the cat was rehomed from a local foster pet service two years ago, and the goldfish were found in an empty classroom three years ago. There was a mouse that I lifted from a live trap in a grain research lab last year (to continue a trend of a new pet every year) but died just after the dog entered our home (fright? too much attention? old age? I'll never know the cause, only the heartbreak).
I'm not very good at taking pictures, so here's one my husband took to help prove what a beautiful view I enjoy every single day (except on bad air days, sigh):
I know that you feel that you are a “grad student at a small university in a small town encased within a small valley”. You write as if small is not as good, significant, prestigious, or important as big. I would propose that because the “views are beautiful”, “the people are great”, and the valley is gorgeous that USU is a very big place. I feel that if we truly value beauty and great people that USU is probably as big as or bigger than Harvard, MIT, Cornell or any other university. I have attended five other colleges or universities and I can honestly say that USU is the biggest. And one of the universities had twice the enrollment of USU.
ReplyDeleteBy the way great blog. Thanks