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Posts tagged Doctorate

Chapter 17f. Two More Weddings and a Tragic Death

Renee and I continued to communicate via Fax and email to get my grant materials written and keep the postdoc planning going. We rarely needed to talk on the phone, so I was surprised to receive a call from France while at work in the lab one day. The caller identified himself as Guy Vassort [...]

Chapter 17e. Two More Weddings and a Tragic Death

Kathy’s wedding itself was a great day. I took lots of photos and did a great job as fourth best man; if I say so myself. During the service, after saying their vows Pete and Kathy had their backs to the crowd. I caught Kathy’s eye for a second and smiled, she smiled back and [...]

Chapter 17d. Two More Weddings and a Tragic Death

Anyway the conversation kind of slowed down after our reminiscing about Ward, so the guys gave Ann a big hug before we left, we were asked to give their regards to Pete and Kathy for their wedding and we finished our errands. When we returned to the homestead things had only settled down a little. [...]

Chapter 17c. Two More Weddings and a Tragic Death

The four of us reminisced for a while, while Ann learned many of my secrets. One of the stories that came up was how my deli and ambulance lives kind of collided one day. I lived closer to the deli than the owners and would often open the deli on weekend mornings. I was in [...]

Chapter 17b. Two More Weddings and a Tragic Death

My first after-school job was in the Katonah Deli and it is where I learned to do catering and a lot of cooking. The owners were John and Manny, and they had several regular employees that I always enjoyed seeing. They were usually there and if I hung out in the deli long enough, I [...]

Chapter 17a. Two More Weddings and a Tragic Death

 Chapter 17. Two More Weddings and a Tragic Death My sister Kathy was getting married to Pete, her longtime boyfriend, and both my brother and I would be in the wedding party. I would be “fourth best man” or “second to worst man” in the 6-man party (including the groom and 5 groomsmen). Ann was [...]

Chapter 11d. The Challenge of the Comprehensives

With the neurophysiology texts and cheat sheets in front of me I tried to get started on my final studying for Wednesday. But I couldn’t get the endocrine-reproduction exam out of my head. I wrote down each of the questions from both exams and a brief synopsis of what my answers were. I was sure [...]

Chapter 11c. The Challenge of the Comprehensives

The big day finally arrived, after 42 days of studying during which my body went through 41 sleep/wake cycles. All eight of the Ph.D. candidate students got to our meeting place very early with coffee, food, drinks and even changes of clothes to be prepared for a long 8 hours of testing split by a [...]

Chapter 11b. The Challenge of the Comprehensives

I was intensely studying something called kinetics. This is the study of rates of chemical reactions and it involves a lot of math. It was an essential part of my research and I worked hard to learn all of the formulas and how the math worked with the science. I had all sorts of numbers [...]

Chapter 11a. The Challenge of the Comprehensives

The comprehensive exam is a big written and oral exam that every Ph.D. student at Michigan State University needs to take and pass. In my own case, it would cover all of the material in my physiology texts and be broken up into the 6 major areas of physiology. Those areas were: Neurophysiology, cardiovascular physiology, [...]