First day as a CAS docent!

It's been quite a while since I've updated, especially since I left off with talking about my musings about grad school. Since then, I've decided to create a separate blog just about my grad school musings; most of the posts are quite technical, focusing on each school, potential professors and such. The road to grad school is really, really quite confusing! While thinking about grad school and being a lab assistant, I had been thinking about volunteering. I have enjoyed volunteering at the Botanical Garden, and I consider my time as a CNR PAL as a kind of community service (but being a PAL also helped me develop so many leadership and people skills!), so I knew I wanted to help the general community in some way. I also knew that I wanted to "keep in touch" with the evolution and botanical aspects of my undergraduate career (that I feel like I don't get a lot of while doing research on maize genetics), and I had such a fabulous internship at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History that I decided that the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) would be the perfect venue to volunteer for.

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Irene Liao
posted 2011-02-27 00:29:45

Shoutout from Alaska!

Hello alumni from the past, and I mean some time ago. As I near 60 years old, I give myself a chance to see what has changed over the years in Forestry, Plant Pathology, and Entomology I am truly amazed. Many old buddies have retired or are thinking of it and others like me with a second family (X and Y generations) are still going strong, maybe not as strong as they used to. I still get out in the woods in Alaska. This year was busy with felling hazardous trees, doing bark beetle projects, and climbing over downfall. I pride myself in knowing how to put a rudimentary GIS layer together, make what I can out of communicating on facebook and twitter, and sending a letter now and again. Best wishes to the graduates of '72.

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Mark E. Schultz
posted 2009-10-01 20:46:32

Annual Alumni Association Meeting

Annual Meeting: October 3, 2009 Saturday, October 3, 2009 10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Giannini Hall Foyer Agenda Items:

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Eva St. Clair
posted 2009-09-25 11:14:27

From CRS to Chocolate, and so much in between!

A lot has happened since graduating from Cal in 1999. I was one of those re-entry students when I arrived at Cal in 1997 and had been involved with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’ s park restoration program and had also been deeply involved in City College of San Francisco’s biology and ecology departments. At one point I was the college liaison for the Park Service, conducting class presentations in order to entice students to volunteer for restoration activities in the Marin Headlands. It helped that some instructors offered extra credit for such noble activities. Not to mention that views of the city from the Headlands were amazing! After arriving at Cal, I immersed myself in classes and campus life, enjoying the fact that I did not have to work while going to school full-time-wow what a concept. My two years at Cal went very quickly and I often found myself wishing that I could have been there for the full four years - but I guess there is always graduate school. I was part of the well known CRS program (Conservation and Resource Studies) and was able to construct my own curriculum around my passion at the time, which was wetlands and wetland restoration. During my last semester, I took a class taught by some outside environmental consultants that focused on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). I liked the fact that the class focused on various aspects of the environmental world, including policy, permitting, planning, and various environmental resource areas. chocolates1.jpg Upon graduation, I hit the ground running trying to find an entry-level job in the environmental consulting field. I eventually landed a job with a small consulting firm in Oakland that was working closely with the Navy on clean-up activities at various Navy facilities in the Bay Area. I quickly learned that not all environmental consulting was created equal. This particular firm focused on health and risk management-which meant lots of number crunching, something I did not find very interesting. Several months later I left after taking a job with yet another firm, doing more of the type of work I was interested in - my first project included working with US Coast Guard. Fast forward several years and I found myself feeling unchallenged creatively; much of consulting work includes reviewing documents written by specialists in other fields (e.g. traffic specialists, geologists, hydrologists, etc) and incorporating that information into a document that will ultimately be used by lawmakers to approve or deny a project. I ultimately figured out that I needed to find something creative in order to balance out the more cerebral part of my life. I started baking, something I used to do when I was a kid, in the kitchen with my grandmother. I also started taking classes in baking thinking that I might want to become a pastry chef. Somewhere along the way, I also began incorporating chocolate into the recipes and was constantly asked by friends to provide the chocolate desserts for their special events.

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Dennis Kearney
posted 2009-09-23 22:15:50

Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences

I can't believe that I've been in medical school for more than a month now. Here at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, Kansas City, Missouri, I've been learning everything from anatomy, biochemistry, embryology, histology, immunology, microbiology, pathology, pharmacology, and physiology. With my Molecular Toxicology background, most of the subjects come to me quite easily. The hardest ones for me are Immunology and Anatomy. I've never been good at blatant memorization (Anatomy/Microbio). The end part of immunology is great for me because we learned alot about apoptosis and necrosis (yay death domains!) with NST 110. For anyone with a MolTox major, take an extra upper div class in Immuno. Microbio in medical school takes a semi-different perspective from the Microbio I had (the PH one~one of the two microbio major req fullfilling classes that we have as a MolTox) since that one was more about etiology and currently in med school we're going from the lab test perspective. I did my first Gram stain two days ago. The hardest part about being well prepared for med school is... LAZINESS. I had my buddy change my facebook account pswd because I was getting ... sidetracked. We have a final on Tuesday (and another on Thursday). ^^ hahah. yay..... ::cries in the corner:: I'm sure y'all at Berkeley don't have any exams until the end of this month right? Have fun meeting people still while I suffer here. Miss y'all. Pray for me!

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Kristin Lee
posted 2009-09-10 09:30:29

"...It is an art."

My professor Dr. Johnston constantly reminds us, "Medicine is an art. It's not black or white. It is an art." I used to think that medicine was like everything else. You stick in A+B+C and output = V. But it isn't...it's A+B+Z+K-J = possible D or N or M+O

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K. Lee
posted 2010-01-26 07:09:42

Meeting the Interim President

The old president/CEO of my old (1916) esteemed institute KCUMB, left and the current president is just awesome. In these past couple months, he's proved to be much more accessible than the previous president. He's had these morning breakfast Meet-the-President events where students can go and have free yummy goodness breakfast and talk to him. I went to one of them on Thursday. Food; quiche, strawberries, donuts. That quiche was so crazy good. But more importantly, being able to talk to the President/CEO about what's going on with our program. He spent 20-30 min at my table of 10. We told him what we wanted, asked him about how certain things were going, and other. Most importantly, he told us that our tuition is going to stay the same or reduce for the next year. (Yes yes, the rest of you at Berkeley are in pain because of those 15% increases in tuition.) That was exciting news. The faculty have also been quite supportive too. Anyone (students or faculty), can just walk in and ask to talk to him. How cool is that? I've never tried it with the Cal Chancellor, but just being able to is awesome. =)

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K. Lee
posted 2010-01-23 09:39:18

The Adjustments of The Real World

I just finished the second week at my very first “real” post-undergraduate job. I work as a Health/Hospital Lab Tech for UCLA’s lab in Brentwood, and though I was prepared for the transition to the real world from an academic one to be difficult, I was still surprised from the needed adjustment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m eternally grateful for having my job in this hire-frozen economy, and even more grateful that I’m working in the health and science field as a recently graduated student. The opportunity is amazing, though the adjustments were hard to settle. The hardest thing to adjust was my sleeping schedule. Gone are the days that I could stay up until 1am and be late for my 8am class. My schedule is as follows in the lab: At 7am, which is when work starts, I organize urine, stool, and critical fluid-streaked media plates in numerical order as each patient is assigned a number, and each specimen from the same patient is assigned a number. These plates are to be “processed” and the Clinical Lab Scientists record the findings into the computerized health system.I then dilute urine solutions and run them in the Vitek machine, which reads cards placed into the solution made and prints a report for the clinical lab scientists. UCLA is known for making their own MIC (microdilution) trays, which are used for inoculations. The trays are kept frozen at negative 70 degrees and take 30 minutes to thaw out before we can use them, so I take a count of all the needed trays of different types before my lunch break to give them time to thaw. After lunch break, I dilute all the specimen solutions in tween water, invert the tubes, and then run the MIC machine until 4 pm. The second hardest adjustment is the 40-hour week. By Friday, I feel like I’ve run miles up and down the Big C trail. On my first week especially, I was nostalgic for the days when Thursday nights were the start of my weekend; Fridays seem to last forever before work ends these days. There have been days where it’s felt like med school was so out of reach, days where I wonder what I am doing and why exactly I am where I am. Those days are rough, especially after working for 8 hours, and being stuck in traffic for 2. But despite these hard adjustments, I’m still very much grateful as I’m learning new techniques and gaining clinical experience for my application. The key now is to stay highly motivated and to save, save, save. I try to remind myself that all of this is part of a journey toward a dream I’m not willing to let go of, and am more than willing to work hard for. I met a friend on the second day of work, and after realizing we had similar goals (He wants to go to vet school) he told me, “We’ll remind each other about our goals every day from now on. Especially on days we’re extremely tired.” Each time I pass him in the halls of our lab or run into him in the elevator, he says “What’s up, future med student!” And I reply with “Hey there future vet student!” as well as a big smile on my face for the rest of the day. Well until I hit the 405 at 4pm anyway.

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Aimmee Chin
posted 2009-08-16 14:31:37

What I Learned From Training Farmers in Tanzania

We read a lot about sustainable agriculture on our multi-acre farms in the USA and the rest of the developed world. What makes them sustainable? The most common farm inputs and farm capital assets tied into sustainability are But there is nothing more sustainable than a small farmer managing to eke out a living by producing food and a bit of cash for the family on one to two acres in a sub-tropical highland in the mountains of Eastern Tanzania. Take a look at this picture of a randomly planted tract, straddling a small creek and looking like a dense and healthy backyard garden. It's a bit hard to pick out all the crops, but there are bananas, pineapple, mango, taro, cassava, chick peas, coconut, cloves and oranges. Their produce is either consumed over the year by the farmer and family or sold for cash to local brokers. It's been recently weeded so the fertile, dark red, volcanic soil is readily exposed.

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John Casazza
posted 2009-08-07 21:18:38

Shoutout from Utah!

Thanks to all of you who have posted your thoughts and comments on this blog. Your enthusiasm for your chosen fields is contagious! I'm particularly impressed by those of you who have such clear focus about your direction. I never had such clarity, but my life has become a series of miraculous and wonderful experiences nonetheless. IMG_2899.jpg
Park City Real Estate Guide Copyright 2008 On my final day of work at Golden Gate fields (my first post-graduation job -- hey, the economy was tough back in '92 too!) I took a mental snapshot of the postcard outside my window -- boats on the bay, golden gate, etc, and said goodbye. It feels like yesterday, but this week marks the 15 year anniversary of my departure from living the good life in California--something I swore would never sacrifice. The next day I bought a rusty pickup truck and moved to Utah, where I worked as a biologist for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources for a few years.

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Erik Asarian
posted 2009-08-03 21:37:57