2009

Well Happy New Year! I can see this year will be filled with lots of new opportunities for me, especially through the REU program. In the mean time, I have been reading like mad!!

Over break our fungi group was assigned this interesting 30 page article, (book would be a more appropriate term) it was hard to get started, but a lot of what the paper discussed ties well into what we are doing (or hoping to do) in the lab. I can see where most of our procedures came from with all the recent readings this year, I think every one of them had at least some major procedure that we also use in the lab.

The one thing I had an issue with on this current reading was that part of it focused on trying to bring out all of the different types of fungi in a soil sample, in order to get an appropriate idea of species diversity and richness. This is all well and good for population and species diversity studies, but I always get back to the point that we aren't looking to mess around with all the different species of fungi, mostly just white rot fungi. So why are we reading about procedure to coax the slow growing fungi into growing on media?

It's not like I didn't enjoy learning some of the procedures, it was great! I just have a horrible habit of approaching assigned reading with one question in mind, how does this relate to what I am doing and what am I supposed to take out of this reading to relate it back to my class?

So I am a little critical about a lot of the assigned reading, sorry.

Anyways, we're meeting tomorrow to discuss the reading and learn our new tasks for the next few weeks. I don't think I had anymore to say, other than I wanted to post a picture I took of the recent snow fall here because it's pretty and I can. mwah hahahaha!

-C