Operation Prep for Move-In

When living on campus, it's important to get the moving-in process going. This involves all the usual packing, making sure everything is accounted for that you need and making the proper arrangements to go out and purchase additional items you need to be functional while at school.

Planning to relocate your life for a few months requires you to go through everything properly and discern what is necessary and what can stay and what can get thrown out. This was not done properly before I came home last semester. Lots of stuff was still in the trunk of my car and was only taken out today. I just went through stuff that did come make its way into the house the other day and it's nearly time to go back to school. Lots of things were thrown out, about 5 or 6 trash bags worth between the stuff from the house and my car combined. My car which has been a trash pit for well over a year now has finally been purged. This is a good feeling YAYYYY!!! I'm hoping to god this lasts.

Now packing can continue to happen as I know what needs to go with me and i have a much better clue of what I need. This shouldn't be stressful, I've done this three times before. Or maybe 5 times if you include the times where I've started a semester when I've been living at school as there are those winter breaks when you move stuff back home because you'll be away from school for a month or so and then when spring semester starts you need to move yourself back in. This isn't rocket science. This isn't science at all. Ironically, I was able to ace organic chemistry and calculus while at school but when it comes to organizing my life I've been somewhat of a failure. My mind's been especially preoccupied the last 6 months or so because of the many things happening in my life. It's time to re-focus.

I have more of a drive than ever to complete school and get out into the work world and become a fully self-reliant, functioning human being. One of my two jobs this summer has been a summer internship at a microbiology lab where I've had a great experience working with wonderful people I've actually grown pretty attached to. I'm hoping to be able to return next summer for the same summer position. I'm feeling very positive about a lot of the things that are in my future. Granted a lot of my friends have left school as they were seniors, some of my friends are traveling far away (outside of the country!) for grad school. It's all very disconcerting at times knowing they won't be right there with me, and that although I hope to go back to my summer job again, if I do, I don't know what I'd do after that position's over. It would only be a summer position unless by some act of god a full time position opened up somewhere, which may not be likely as the economy is so bad. However I'm going to try to go with the flow. See where life takes me. Roll with life's punches. I do feel optimistic though. I think I have a good shot at landing a job somewhere, and although people are far away it in no way means they're gone. The internet makes communication so much easier:-D

First Blog Post

As this is my first blog, I would like to take a second to introduce myself:

My name is Doug and I’m from Massachusetts. I’m a college student, entering my fourth year. I’m a biochemistry major. From what I’ve just mentioned, you can understand two of the three words in the title of this blog.

The other word is somewhat unrelated. Cakes. Well, it just so happens it is related in a way. For me that is. Cakes are what I do while I’m at school and not studying. Or rather, food is what I do when not studying and/or researching and working. I have found that I love cooking for in a way it is science, but it’s not an exact science all the time and if you know what you’re doing well enough measuring turns into guesstimating and turns into all sorts of deliciousness in the end… Unless it turns into a hot mess, in which case you learn never to add ingredients in those relative amounts ever again.

One of the aims of this blog will be to document my food-making ventures and share with you both my triumphs and utter failures… Most of which will be documented with pictures and explanations of what I did and why it failed if it’s known and follow up food experiments if they take place.

Other aims of this will be to post about life at school and updates about my research that will be taking place at school and other tidbits of relevant things in the life of Doug.

I hope this blogging experiment is as enjoyable for you as I’m sure it will be for me!