First week of semester 1, 2013

Wow, what a hectic first week! Hannah and I are working a lot this semester. Between tutoring and demonstrating, Hannah is working about 4 days a week, and I am working 2 days a week. There are also marking of lab assignments, writing papers, planning experimental designs etc. It feels that we have accomplished a lot in the week, and therefore, we really appreciated and enjoyed the weekend off from work. The school campus are filled with freshmen, who are excited about every new aspects of their newly found freedom (from home and high school), and university classes. And then, there are the international students queueing outside the international office, waiting impatiently for application of their student visa. Clubs and student societies are trying their best to recruit new members.

The BIOSCI lab coordinators put me as the tutor for Monday labs. Hannah was joking about the "poor" students who have to get me as their tutor in the very first class of their first day in their university life! And this is the opening slide of my first lab (Microscopy) :) :

Another exciting news - we submitted the endolithic microbial paper for review. Now is the waiting game - to see when the reviewers will get back to us on changes etc. In the meantime, still working hard on the other two papers, while finalizing the first experiment for my PhD research. The first experiment (which will be carried out in June/ July 2013) will be focusing on identifying and correlating biological/ molecular for stressed coral colonies. I am excited and nervous at the same time! Also, I just received the confirmation that I passed my provisional PhD, thus making me a full-fledged PhD candidate now.