Already December

So, it's already December.

Forget Christmas cheer.. Finals are here.

I was fortunate to have only one final. But three semester projects. One of the projects was the large report on AT/RT, and part of the project was presenting the paper to a small group of members of the class.

So I threw together a slideshow and arrived at Dr. Housman's meeting room on the fifth floor in E18 today at 2:05.

Dr. Housman hadn't brought his dog. On some days, the dog accompanies him to class. Sometimes the dog falls asleep, and Dr. Houseman hurries through the slides, "Even the dog is falling asleep!" Or the dog will howl, signaling impatience, and class is let out early.. Crazy stuff like that. And the dog is a walking example of at least three types of cancers.

But the dog wasn't there today.

The presentations began at 2:15. we were already behind. Nate got up and talked for a significant time about melanomas. While he is a very nice person in general, he had grossly overestimated our interest in the signaling pathways implicated in melanoma.



At one point in the presentation, he brought up the BRAF V600E mutation. Dr. Housman had fallen asleep, but woke up at this point. After glancing at the slides, Dr. Housman made an insightful comment, as only a brilliant sleeping professor can do:

"Did you know that you are standing in the very spot where the PhD student who made that discovery had his bench? Yes, I think right there. This room used to be split by a wall, and his bench would have been right there."

Crazy.

My presentation went off without a hitch, and I tried to keep it to the 15-minute time limit. Dr. Housman only interrupted once, asking whether the SWI/SNF complex slides histones to reveal genes or promoters... I don't think anyone knows the answer to that question, so I didn't feel bad saying "I don't know."

But, isn't that cool? Some of the groundbreaking melanoma research that is still being talked about today was done in the conference room where we presented our semester projects.

I thought it was cool.

Speaking of cool, it's already December. Somerville reports a current temperature of 27F degrees. I'm joining the campaign committee promoting global warming.