Zero To Sixty In...

An appropriate title. Since my last entry a lot has happened, mostly in the way of the academic semester starting. It has come on with a vengeance and I have a lot on my plate. But so far I am managing. One of the huge things is that this is the last semester I am taking courses that are required for admission into PA school, which I am really happy about. The load I have is still significant; I'm taking two hard science courses (as opposed to "soft" sciences) and a foreign language. And if that isn't enough, I have a bunch of mandatory education I need to complete for my employers. So I have my hands full.

As far as the foreign language is concerned, I opted to learn one because if I decided to continue requirements for a second bachelor's degree a foreign language is part of the package. So I chose Chinese. Anyone I've spoken to has asked me, "Chinese? Why? Why not a European language?" I wanted to learn something different. As it is, I've been exposed to all of the other languages offered (French, Spanish, German, Italian), and while I don't speak any of them well enough to have a conversation with someone, I can recognize words and phrases in each of them. Chinese is different; I knew absolutely nothing about it when I started and while I still know relatively nothing, I'm finding that so far it isn't as bad as I expected it would be. So I'm going to persevere. As the semester goes on, I'll likely talk about this more. So stay tuned.

I am also taking two Biology courses: Microbiology and Cell/Molecular Biology. From what I see so far, they overlap some, which I'm okay with. Plus, there is a lot of information that so far is review, but I know there will be more coming that is not. Plus, I need to research a Nobel laureate as part of the requirement for the Cell course. I was assigned Arthur Kornberg - he won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1959 for work he did on RNA/DNA synthesis. Beyond that, I don't know anything about him, other than that of his three sons, two of them are also scientists and one, his son Roger, won the Nobel prize for chemistry - I'm not sure of the year but I believe it was 2006.

More to follow on both of those, as well.