Yet again

8am, the alarm on my mobile phone rings. The first step onto the floor *argh*, cold. So I tumble by random movement - though keeping as little floor-contact as possible - into the bathroom to take a shower. Optimistic as I am assuming that there will be hot water again, but I couldn't have been any wronger. The salvation comes in form of putting on yesterday's clothes and another half hour in bed. The rule of thumb that any chemical reaction will slow down by 50 per cent as soon as it cools down by 10 centigrade is apparently applicable to Mikes morning reactions as well. Once more a cold shower.

On a different note: I've been contemplating about launching some kind of GRE survey, asking university professors for their opinion on the GRE, how important it is in the application processes and what information they can extract from the results. I'm not sure anyone would reply, especially since I'm a GRE-grieving graduate, but I might give it a shot.

Time to be back

It's been quite a while since I've written my last entry. I'm sitting in Andrea's lab and the only thing I can do right now is translating some e-learning tutorials from English into German. It pays part of my rent, but is not particularly thrilling when all you do is think about how you may restructure a sentence in German so that the variable included by the server-sided code is still at the end of the sentence. Sometimes an impossible quest and often boring.

But I better start at the very beginning (make sure you sit comfortably, here comes the probably longest entry ever): In the middle of last summer I started revising for the graduate record examination general test (GRE), one bullshit compilation of exercises that should evaluate a graduate's academic capability [1], which I was due to take at the latest by end of October. As idiotic as this test may appear to assess academic virtues, it still is employed by virtually every American postgraduate institution and suddenly some British colleges show the tendency to trust the «,test» results as well [2]. Considering that I'm no native speaker, nor did I grow up in an English-speaking nation, I believe I did an excellent job in the verbal part scoring more points than most American graduates [3]. The mathematics part was a breeze, but I screwed up badly in the essay section and therefore laid the foundations for the failure of most of my US applications.

I'm now the proud owner of six rejection letters from six Ivy League universities. I'm a first class student, I've collected three awards throughout my undergraduate degree, was twice on the dean's list and have a bunch of other useful qualifications that make me stand out, but I wasn't even invited to the interviews. Yet strangely, I was on the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory [4] interview list and I also attended the European Molecular Biology Laboratory interviews, with unfortunately unsuccessful outcome. In case of CSHL this was especially sad since many of my interviewers hinted that I would be accepted. In the end there were probably some hidden quotas as one of my friends here at UCL was offered a place.

Personally I don't believe that Ivy League and other elitist universities per se carry out better research than the «normal» institutions do, but getting into the high class journals is definitely easier with a big name including a big publication record behind you. Even though that means you follow the stupid «everyone comes five minutes before the professor and leaves the lab five minutes after the professor» rule for four to six years.

After receiving the last rejection letter extremely late (I'll never forget the fourth of April), I was clinging to the last straws such as going to the EMBL labs in Grenoble [5], or the DKfZ labs in Heidelberg [6], but none was to become true. While I was away for interviews the Medical Research Council deadlines passed and the professors I approached directly didn't have any interest in replying. Put yourself into my position, having all the ambitions to stay in higher education but no funds to do so.

Luckily, a professor (Jim) who lectured on my cardiovascular disease course sent out a circular email about a British Heart Foundation funded PhD on gene therapy of ApoE knock-out mice. As Jim made a little reading mistake the application is still pending and I'll have to wait until mid-October to be informed about the outcome [7].

Narf, thus I spent the summer searching for short-term research appointments so I could afford living in London from September onwards. There're plenty of RA positions with a duration of one year and longer, but there's nothing with less [8]. So my knight in the shiny armour turned out to be Andrea who offered me some money for finishing my BSc project and some other lab work. Additional funding would be coming from the translation of e-learning tutorials now destined for medicine students, which I should translate into German, or rather which I'm translating right now (I keep swapping between the blog window and the word window).

I'm sometimes wondering whether I should start collecting information on how rubbish some application systems are and publish a book about it.

Cheerio, there's a blood pH tutorial waiting to be fully translated. But I think I'll have a cup of coffee first. Coffee? Ehm.. I mean the brown stuff the common room's machine extrudes in exchange to 30 pence.

[1] There are plenty of post by me nagging about the GRE and a bazillion more sprinkled over the web, treat yourself.
[2] Namely, Cambridge. Some finance master courses if I remember correctly.
[3] Can you believe that?!?
[4] CSHL is led by James Watson and offers probably the best PhD programme for biological sciences.
[5] The trip to Grenoble is an entertaining story on its own, with myself not capable of speaking French and the French not willing to speak English.
[6] That kinase lady never came back to me after I set up a whole presentation and wanted to book my flights. Andrea always told me that kinase people are different; I should have listened to her.
[7] Should you hear about an Austrian going berserk in London around mid-October, you know my application was rejected.
[8] To be precise, there was one, but instead of hiring me as a well qualified person they chose to rehire someone they've already worked with. That's the simple outline, it was actually a little more complicated with wrong application deadlines being posted and Mike being utterly pissed off for many hours.

PS. isn’t it malicious irony that exactly now, after writing this entry, I receive an email from the GRE service?

Guess what came per mail today

Wrong! It was my GRE Powerprep software. Let me contemplate this: today is the 15th of January 2007 and I sat the exam on the first of November 2006. I registered for the test one month prior to the test-day, on the first of October. So the CD was only one and a half months late to reach me before the exam [1]. Strangely, it was delivered by Deutsche Post and its journey apparently took it through Frankfurt. Even more confusing is the French postmark.

[1] Not that it would have been useful at this time any more.

So I finished my GRE general test

Here comes the real fun: the statements of purpose for 7 American and 4 British universities. Let's get skilled in the art of catchy, literate, entertaining and informative but not amusing, emotional or bombastic writing. Sounds for me like a paper about n HIV cure.

Something else: There's a hairl-dresser in Euston station with a very time efficient system. First you buy a voucher at a ticket machine (9£ for men), then you queue up, get your hair cut and finally they treat you with a «head-vaccum cleaner» to get rid of all those tiny pieces of hair that would drive you mad. Very innovative, quick and cheap.

GRE, authentic signature?

I went to the Thompson-Prometric test centre this afternoon to ensure everything works just fine tomorrow morning (need to be there at but-crack dawn). After having a rather meaningless chat with the receptionist, I shifted the conversation towards identification requirements. My passport is dating back to the middle 90ies, an almost ancient document without any artificial intelligence. Thus, I’m allegedly 1.56m, having blue eyes, specs are an innate part of my face and the signature has absolutely nothing in common with today’s. In fact, I’m now 1.85m (6’1”), my eye colour is green and I haven’t used my glasses for almost five months. Nevertheless, according to the GRE test committee I need to sign in with exactly the same signature as on my bloody 10year old passport, how smart… «go practise it».

Recently

I managed to attract a bunch of rhino- and coronaviruses, which now feel very comfy and homely in my nose and throat. My ultimate treatment is hardcore hat and scarf usage as well as tea consumption without measures. Meanwhile I set the thermostat (wait, we only have lousy radiators with a screw) to maximum, i.e. I'm boiling myself - wonder when I'm done and ready for consumption.

Several friends decided to enjoy «The Nutcracker» briefly before the Christmas holidays in the royal opera house. Hapless as I am, I don't even have a suit with me (lets conceal that my old suit is 3 sizes too big) and a mere 60 quid are no peanuts for an old curmudgeon like me.

Eventually, I grudgingly accepted that (even though my intransigence shouldn't permit) there is no easy way around the GRE. Thus, I'll make a more belligerent attempt and deceive the Americans that my virtues aggrandised over the past three weeks to the standard of a native speaker. ... Who am I fooling? Took me 5 minutes to construct this absolute nonsense sentence above.

Update: Wow, «The Nutcracker» ticket cost 79 sterling, usury. I somehow understand that ballet remains entertainment for the rich and elitist upper class.

I feel like a real nerdy scientist

... when I consider my scope regarding general GRE issue task topics. It's within my capabilities to summarise G-protein coupled receptors within 900 words, but I cannot write more than a mere 200 words about art critics. Judge yourself (this is absolutely genuine):

"Although, critics who write about the arts tend to deny the existence of any objective standards for evaluating works of art, they have a responsibility to establish standards by which works of art can be judged."

Art is subjective. What one person considers to be directly produced by devine intervention, another evaluates only good enough to be put on a toilet wall. I therefore agree with critics. The only estabilished standards applicable to classify arts, don't classify in good or bad art, but in genres; e.g. Money and van Gogh as expressionist or Salvador Dali as surrealist.

What can be judged objectively are techniques used, though even this can...AHHHHH, I FUCKING HATE ARTS!!!!

Let me extend my last statement: I fucking hate the GRE exam as well. Since the issue task is all about reasoning, let me underscore my argument with sufficient material: aberrant, abscond, aggrandize, ambiguous, ambrosial, anachronism, antediluvian, arbitrate, attenuate, audacious, aver, barefaced, blandishment, bombast, buttress, cadge, caprice, castigate, chicanery, complaisant, conflagration, corporeal, corroborate, craven, culpable, dearth, deference, depict, deprecation, depredation, descry, diatribe, diffident, disabuse, disparaging, dispassionate, dissemble, dogged, eclectic, emollient, encomium, enervate, engender, ephemera, equivocal, erudite, eulogy, exacerbate, exculpate, extant, fathom, fawn, feign, fervid, fervent, fledgling, florid, floundering, garrulous, gossamer, guile, guileless, hapless, headlong, iconoclast, impecunious, imperious, implication, improvidence, inchoate, incorrigible, indelible, ineffable, ingenuous, innocuous, insensible, insipid, insular, intransigent, irascible, leviathan, loquacious, lugubrious, magnanimity, malevolent, misnomer, misogynist, mitigate, nefarious, noisome, obdurate, obviate, occlude, ossified, panegyric, peccadillo, perfidious, petulant, placate, plethora, ponderous, pragmatic, precipice, prevaricate, prodigal, propitiate, Pulchritudinous, pusillanimous, quiescence, rarefy, reproof, rescind, sagacious, sanguine, sate, saturnine, savant, sedulous, specious, tacit, taciturn, temperate, tirade (diatribe), tortuous, tractable, turpitude, tyro, vacuous, venerate, verbose, vex, viscous, voracious, waver, wretched.

Memo to myself: be less vulgar.

Graduate Record Examinations - I'm so screwed

Besides my business course (with the fantastic name of "evaluation and planning of business opportunities in bio-processing and life sciences") all the finals exam were quite straightforward and "easy" (God if you protect me of Vicky's and Aurora's wrath I'll believe, I promise...).

From the day on I wrote my "metabolic processes" exam I decided to hate essay type questions. Writing more than 20 pages within 2 1/2 hours was simply too much for my "tender" hands.

Since my second year is finished now, I try to enjoy my regained freedom: punish the liver. On the other hand, some less useful things are on my agenda: GRE for PhD applications. Funnily enough, I won't encounter problems with the allegedly harder subject related GREs, but with the general test.

Example - Analogies:
HEADLONG : FORETHOUGHT
(A) barefaced : shame
(B) mealymouthed : talent
(C) heartbroken : emotion
(D) levelheaded : resolve
(E) singlehanded : ambition

The difficulty of this question probably derives primarily from the complexity of the relationship between headlong and forethought rather than from any inherent difficulty in the words. Analysis of the relationship between headlong and forethought reveals the following: an action or behavior that is headlong is one that lacks forethought. Only answer choice (A) displays the same relationship between its two terms.

Can someone please shoot me? I didn't even know the meaning of those two words! It's getting worse:

Example - Antonyms:
MULTIFARIOUS
(A) deprived of freedom
(B) deprived of comfort
(C) lacking space
(D) lacking stability
(E) lacking diversity

Multifarious means having or occurring in great variety, so the best answer is (E). Even if you are not entirely familiar with the meaning of multifarious, it is possible to use the clue provided by “multi-” to help find the right answer to this question.

Why can't there be an easy way?