Seth spends some of his free time playing intramural soccer.

just figured out two projects for me and I am looking at previous protocols for what I'll be doing and making contacts with people I'll need to be getting turkey trachea from. Last year, Dr. Temple came to my biotech seminar class and gave a lecture about her research. At the time I was/am heavily interested in avian flu (which I later gave a presentation on to students and faculty) and its potential for a huge epidemic. In her presentation about bordetella avium she mentioned hoping to try and do some research possibly connected with that. That definitely got my interest. Unfortunately it didn't end up working out, but I'm interested in infectious disease in general and you have to start somewhere. Also Dr. Temple is a great person to work with and the other students in the lab are good company as well.

I guess the only rewarding experience I can think of since I've been in the lab for such a short time, other than all the free food haha, would be the fact that my first research proposal was accepted. Usually you have to put a good amount of time into a proposal or have to let someone come up with a proposal for you, but it was all my idea and completely accepted. Frustrating I guess are just the little setbacks we encounter from unforeseen problems such as when we plated about 30 different strains a couple weeks ago on agar plates, but they ended up coming out really poorly because the agar plates were still wet after coming out of the fridge, so they smeared all over the plate and we couldn't get individual colonies, making it a complete waste of time. Assets: I can focus when I need too, I have a good experience in research labs (from the medical school) although it's not with bacteria, I can be very sensitive to detail and I have a steady hand (something needed for pipetting), haha.

Weaknesses: for this lab at least, I don't have much experience with bacteria, although I guess neither do the other students when they start, I'm starting as a junior which gives me less time than the other students. I'm not really sure about after graduation, I was expecting to go to medical school, however I'm not sure if that's what I'm interested in anymore. I had a lot of time this summer to talk to Dr.'s and take a look into medical school while I worked there this summer and I'm not sure if its what I want to do. It's something I'm quite confident I'm capable of, however I don't know if its for me. I'd like to work with infectious disease somewhere I think, maybe doing research, or maybe something completely different than what I've been thinking lately. I'm having a difficult time making up my mind.

Oct. 24, 2006:
Well, it’s taken me a while to start this journal; mainly because of a slightly chaotic schedule. Last week I had a advanced molecular bio exam, had to do a lot of work on an advanced molecular bio lab exam, which I turned in today; lots of physics work; research work; a co-ed intramural indoor soccer championship game (which we lost); and I’m also trying to change my schedule around now that it's almost half-way through the semester. Oh yeah, it was also homecoming weekend (which really doesn’t differ from any other weekend, it's just now you have a better reason/excuse for your normal habits as a college student), so work wasn’t exactly my main priority for a good amount of the time, which didn’t improve things. Regardless, it was a great weekend, especially compared to the previous, fall break, which wasn’t too difficult to beat considering one of the nights I blacked out by 10 p.m. Haha, I think that’s a record, and a pathetic one at that, 10 p.m.??? Am I serious? I mean, from time to time I’ll just stay in and go to bed ‘early,’ but that still doesn’t consist of anything even close to before midnight. Yeah that was pathetic, but it was definitely made up for over homecoming even though we didn’t have the party here that we (Paul and I) had been discussing.

I also have an upcoming physics exam, biochemistry exam, biochemistry project/presentation and advanced molecular biology Web page designed to display a lab paper to complete within the next week and a half. I’m not really sure if I should include the physics exam in that sentence, however, because I’ve been debating dropping this class for the past week. I’ve never taken a physics class in my life and instead of taking physics 124 or physics 140, I decided to take the physics 240 class. At the time I was contemplating a chemistry minor that required the physics 240, however now I just picked up a second major of Biotechnology, which does not require this physics class. My primary major, biology, only requires the physics 140, which I will probably end up taking in the spring once I drop 240 this week. I’ve never even considered dropping a class, but for once a class is getting the best of me and in all honesty I think I just didn’t put the work into it I initially needed too and just dug too deep of a hole to get out of at this point, or at least by this Thursday when I have to decide. It’s not worth taking the chance of doing poorly and I can just replace it next semester.

I started my outdoor intramural men’s league season today, which unfortunately began with a 2 goal loss. We (Josh, Scott, Naff, Gabe, Drew, Jeremy, Walter, Dan and myself) played pretty decently, but I think quite a few of us (myself probably on the top of the list) are a little out of shape and need to work on that. Unfortunately I enjoy a good nap when I have the spare time rather than a good jog and tire myself out even more. Tonight was also MNF, which was pretty good. I know most people hate T.O. and think he’s arrogant and selfish….which is true, but he’s also an incredible athlete. I hate the cowboys with a passion, and Bledsoe for that matter, but whenever they’re playing I like to see T.O. make some good plays. Bledsoe also got taken out tonight from QB and they put in ROMO which made me really happy because I’m a Bills fan, and honestly I blame Bledsoe for ruining our season a few years back when Flutie went on a winning streak, only to be replaced by Bledsoe once he recovered from his injury….and the Bills went back to losing, what a coincidence. On a side note, the Wolverines continued their undefeated season Saturday with a win over Penn State, which was only close because of the injury of Manningham. I’m psyched for the Ohio State/Michigan show down in a few weeks. Other weekend notes: I’m sure most of the students know what the “Mennonite store” is, although that isn’t the technically correct name for it anymore. Well it was a great choice for breakfast/lunch Saturday, when we came across airsoft bb guns they were selling for $8….probably the single greatest investment of all time. I’m sure it sounds dumb and childish, because it is and that’s the beauty of it, but we (Paul, John, Dane, Johnny, Brandon, Carrie and myself) spent a few good hours Saturday afternoon shooting each other non-stop with that thing. We all (about 6 of us) have small red welts or bruises from the countless shots we took. You can only be this stupid for a while in your lifetime, luckily I’m at that point. This weekend I also bought 28 days later and The Omen (new version). Something you may come to find out with me is I’m REALLY big on movies and have an obsession with buying them. I have a pretty descent collection of around 100 although it’d be a LOT higher if it wasn’t such an expensive hobby.

Research related notes: I really need to start making some of the solutions needed for my protocol on isolating the turkey trachea ciliated cells. I’ve been at this same step for a few weeks now. I’ve just been really busy, but there aren’t going to be many points where I won’t be able to say that, so I just need to step it up I think and get to it. I have the turkey farmers on stand-by for whenever I want my turkey trachea and the camera guy working on this article (Evan) ready for whenever I want to go pick up the trachea and get started. I’d just like to make sure I have enough time to really put in my full concentration and effort into the start of this project. I’m normally extremely efficient with what I do and plan on doing the same here.

Oct. 31, 2006
It’s pretty tough trying to keep up with this thing. I really don’t have a lot of free time so the little amount I usually gather together I try and give to myself so I can stay sane. It’s been a complete week, probably because the lab meetings and seeing the Madison Magazine people kind of remind me, oh yeah, I’m supposed to be writing. Well, since last week I’ve been holding on by a thread trying to finish everything at the last second then moving onto the next project, which is usually due the following second. I was finally able to complete the lab paper and turn it into a Web page with help from my group members. I spent two evenings/nights in Burruss putting that together, not much fun. It got finished last night around 10pm or so. That gave me just enough time to get home and start on the biochem assignment due the following morning. Well that’s not true, I did take a half hour break to watch the new episode of ATHF, which I’m a pretty big fan of. That is probably the one thing other than college football I make time for regardless of what’s going on. The biochem thing actually just reminded me I have another project for that class due I think next week, which I haven’t had time to start on either. I doubt it’ll be too time consuming, I just have to make some slide presentation on something I find interesting and applies to biochemistry. Next week I also have to give a quick presentation to the VA BIO organization (which I’m a part of) on the research I did this summer at the medical school in Blacksburg. I’m not really sure what they expect me to say, meaning it’ll probably be extra short.

Yes, this past weekend was the big Halloween weekend. As I’m sure most JMU students did, I had a great time. Digital camera’s are a funny thing, I can’t even begin to think of all the stupid/funny things I wouldn’t be aware I did if it wasn’t for my friends and their use of these cameras. Nothing bad of course, just stupid things all college kids do when they’re more easily convinced to make fools of themselves. I was a little disappointed with the costumes I saw this year; nothing that creative caught my eye. Maybe something did and I can’t recall, but from what I do recall nothing did. I myself had intended on dressing up as the rapper Lil’ John, but I went to Glenn’s Fair Price to get short thick dreads and all I could find were thin long ones, which more like braided pig tails, so I dropped that idea immediately and started looking for something random. I came across a nice piece of chest armor and a short sword for a gladiator costume. For the cheap price it was definitely worth the investment and actually worked out pretty great. Of course I wore this armor, sword and leather wristband with jeans….it was cold, haha. Thankfully that didn’t stop the girls from wearing whatever costumes they had probably thought up in their heads while it was warm outside, if you don’t get what I’m saying….you’ve probably already been offended by things I’ve said or aren’t interested in it.

We had an outdoor intramural soccer game last night, and the photographer, Evan, was actually able to make it out. Not sure if any of the pictures from the game will end up in there at all. We ended up tying 3-3 unfortunately. As I told Evan, you win some, you lose some, and every now and then you tie, which really sucks. Last year during indoor intramural soccer I fractured my right foot (which is the same ankle I completely broke my senior year of High School, also a soccer injury, which is the reason I now have 2 screws holding my ankle together and will for the rest of my life) so it’s still pretty sensitive to any hard contact. Normally even if I try to rip a shot too hard it can hurt to run on it. So last night there was a 50/50 ball and one of the guys on the other team and I completely locked legs on it, it was my right foot. He actually went down and we had to stop the game, meanwhile I was wondering why I wasn’t laying on the ground doing the same thing as it obviously hurt like a…. yeah. I figured after my adrenaline went away after the game I wouldn’t be able to put weight on it (as this has happened a couple times since the injury). Luckily this wasn’t the case and it feels pretty normal, so don’t bother giving me any pity points. You’d probably be better off telling me to shut up and take it like a man, haha, as I’m sure Amy would (she’s a sweet girl).

As far as research goes I was actually able to start my project today. I made a trip out to the turkey plant and pick up 10 Turkey tracheas and begin the protocol created in previous years by Kevin (a JMU alumnus of ’06). Today what I was able to do was cut open the trachea lengthwise, wash/cut out most of the “gunk” and then using a tooth brush try and scrub off cilia from the cells inside the trachea. Cilia are little hair like attachments on cells which can help a cell more, or in this case help a cell move things, such as mucus or whatever. So by scrubbing the inside of the trachea I would hope to scrub hard enough for these cilia to come off of the cell but not rip off the cells themselves. And because nothing ever happens perfectly and there is still some amount of “gunk” in the trachea, multiple steps were taken to separate the cilia from the cells and other “gunk”. So right now we’re hoping the last amount of “stuff” I ended up with (in a liquid solution) contains tiny little cilia. Dr. Temple and I will start checking out these samples tomorrow or sometime soon to see what we actually got following the protocol left to us. Hopefully cilia is exactly what we got and I can start using this protocol more often to create fresh batches of cilia for us to work with and begin working on the question of what protein on the cilia surface does Bordetella Avium bind too.

I’m going home this weekend to work on my research at the medical school, or at least I’m planning on it. I haven’t heard back from the doctor I work with, which doesn’t surprise me because he isn’t really the quickest at replying through email. I’ll probably have to call him tomorrow to try and make sure he’s going to be around. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten my own key yet, it’s still in the paperwork process in administration, which is a headache.

Well it’s almost 2 a.m. and my 9 a.m. tomorrow is mandatory, plus I have to get a good amount of studying done tomorrow for the biochem test Thursday (technically tomorrow I guess), which I have managed to do literally none of so far. I know there were at least two other things going on tomorrow that I wanted to do, I just can’t remember. I’m sure we probably have a VABIO meeting, but I feel like there was some other event going on I just can’t think of. This is what happens when you have as horrible as a memory I do and not enough sticky notes to cover everything. Don’t bother recommending a planner, I'll just forget it somewhere and can’t write the dates in when I need too or just forget to write in it in general, I’ve tried. A little end note, my room is a complete mess right now, which I’ve been meaning to take care of for some time, I just don’t have any time, so its covered in clothes, documents, books and a keg shell, which has been sitting in here for over a month now. There’s just too many things going on to have time for the things I’m supposed to make time for every day, such as cleaning my room, replacing light bulbs, taking out trash, etc. I definitely do these things; don’t get too disgusted, it’s just difficult to work around that. This should obviously show I don’t have free time to do fun random things some people do like go on trips to go hiking or take bike rides, etc. I definitely don’t have as many hobbies as I used too, that’s for sure.

Nov. 12, 2006
Well I haven’t done an update in a while so I’m not really sure where to start. Research is going great, grades are still fine, nothing really new in the love life and I haven’t inherited a large amount of money….so everything is still pretty boring and the same. We actually won our soccer game last Monday, so now we’re 1-1-1. I scored 2 goals, which was a nice change, I guess I just felt bad making Scott do all the work every game, haha. Last week was mainly research focused. I didn’t have too much going on academically so I took the chance to catch up with my research. Unfortunately the only academic thing that was somewhat busy last week was my advanced molecular lab, so if I wasn’t doing research I was still in a biology lab doing something. Believe it or not, that’s actually a huge bummer. I really don’t enjoy doing bio all the time, its just something I guess I’m pretty good at and understand, so it’s just kind of natural for me to do it. I’d much rather be watching college football though, which thankfully I normally don’t have any interference with, or if I do I just put it off. I feel like I’m one of few biology majors though who do this sort of thing, so reading this I don’t want people to start thinking being a biology major is easy. Most of my friends and people I know of that are in the same major as I am don’t go out on weekends or make time for a lot of the things I do. Studying isn’t something I normally do until the day before a test, unless I feel like it will be pretty tough, then I’ll probably study a small amount 2 or 3 days before the test to refresh for the more intense studying the day before.

Nov. 14, 2006
Well it’s 4:45 a.m. and I just got back from Charlottesville. Why? That’s a great question, haha. Just got a spontaneous urge to visit some friends and decided I’d take a drive there to hang out. It’s just under an hour, which isn’t that bad of a drive. Where I live you have to drive a half hour to get anywhere anyway, so another 15 or so is nothing. When you have a crazy schedule you find yourself fitting things like this into time slots you wouldn’t normally think too. I guess it helps to be spontaneous too, or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe not having time for things when I normally should, therefore forcing me to do them at un-normal times makes me spontaneous. Either way I still have some work to do that I’m going to try and finish up and still catch a few hours of sleep before my class in the morning. I’d say I’m looking forward to the nap afterward, but after that is our lab meetings then probably going over my past week’s research/work with Dr. Temple, and then I have physics lab from 6:45 p.m. to 9 p.m. I’ll find an hour in there somewhere probably, where I should be doing work but I can put off for another day and take a nap instead. Oh yeah, we had another game today….or yesterday I guess, we won 3-1. I also have to mention the I’m a HUGE Michigan fan and the anticipation for this Saturday’s Michigan Vs Ohio State game is literally killing me. Michigan’s defense hasn’t looked that great the past two weeks, which is bad considering that’s what everyone thinks they’re chance is with. But they also haven’t had Manningham for the past 4 weeks or so, and even though he was back last week, they didn’t use him really at all. Hopefully Manningham is fine and they’re just playing it like he’s not really 100% yet or not fully back into the game plan but really will be. I could probably talk about this for over an hour on how everyone thinks Michigan hasn’t seen a mobile quarterback yet, although I think Indiana’s QB was pretty quick, but I say they’ll still be able to stop Troy Smith and little things like that. Regardless, Wolverine’s are going to win, 27-21. That’s my call.

Nov. 16, 2006
So its only 44 hours until the Michigan/Ohio State game…..and I can’t focus on anything. I’m a huge college sports fan, football and basketball, but I normally don’t get so pumped up during football season as I do for March Madness. I guess that’s because March Madness has so many great games just one after the other and it’s just an overload. Football is normally just a game at a time, even with the BCS bowls they’re at least a day or two apart. This game however is more than any BCS game could ever be, it’s the biggest college football rivalry (as voted by the American people last year during the BCS championship game on ESPN.com), its #1 vs. #2 both undefeated, and its not just a #1 vs. #2, its at the end of the season AND the same conference. This hasn’t been done since 1935 in some southwest conference. Even better my advanced molecular teacher is a big Ohio State fan, so the entire semester her and I have been talking trash about the other team since they’re rivals, and now its come down to this. Even more ironically is that I have a test in that class tomorrow….and I can’t concentrate to study for it because of the upcoming game. My best friend is also coming into town tomorrow, which is awesome; I haven’t seen her since August when we both left for school because she goes to Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina on a soccer scholarship. I’ve done well in this class so far this year so I’m hoping if I choke tomorrow because of the lack of concentration I’ll still be fine, I guess we’ll see. Saturday night will be pretty fun too, as you may or may not know depending on what they include in the article about us. Alexis (one of the other focuses of the undergrad research article) and I will be partying it up pretty big Saturday at a mutual friends 21st birthday party and one of the photographers is planning on being there. I’m sure any and every photo he gets of us will be worth more than a thousand words, most of which I’m sure would be quite humorous.

Nov. 30, 2006
Hey, the trachea work is coming alright. The initial step went almost perfectly with getting the cilia, and now I've done the demembrenation step, so I have to run another gel to see how that went. Once we start getting a pure sample of just the membrane we can start trying to attach it to the bacteria to see what specific proteins we're interested in. My work with isolating B. avium is coming along a little bit slower in the beginning, but once I get it started I think it will move really fast. The antibiotics we tested didn't look that promising so I'm trying to find something else that will kill E. coli without hurting most strains of B. avium. Because although we found something that killed more E. coli than B. avium, it still killed B. avium, even if it wasn't as strong. I have a couple ideas for a water source, I may use Newman Lake on campus, or the pond in the arboretum initially. Once I get a set protocol down, which will still take some more initial testing that will be done this week, then I'll branch out and get water samples from local rivers etc. out in the environment.

Well just to see if the method I'm going to use to isolate B. avium can even work, I'm going to take some water, put B. avium AND E. coli in the water sample, so I KNOW that it's in there, and then run my method to see if I'm actually able to isolate B. avium from it. So just to test to see if my method works I'll be placing both into a water sample, but when I actually go to try and isolate it from the environment I won't be placing anything in my sample. Bacteria are found all over the place, and we have no idea where B. avium is in the wild, but we THINK it's in a water source, and the water sources surrounding Harrisonburg are FILLED with E. coli, so if we're correct, then yes, they will definitely be found in the same place, along with several other types of bacteria. Once again my purpose for running the studies I am with Rachel is to find an antibiotic that will kill E. coli but not B. avium under certain concentrations, so hopefully we'll be able to do that.

[Reviews and critiques of papers in lab meetings] have certainly helped me some as writing is most definitely not my strong point. However I think the main focus in the paper reviews is for us to take a look at the papers and dumb down anything that may be over the head of the average scientific reader. We don't want to stretch it out too much and explain basic science things that most scientists would know, but there are a lot of things in these papers that are specific to one field of science that you may not find in another.

Jan. 11, 2007
[No minor] — with my two majors I don't really have much more time for a minor. I wanted to have a chemistry minor, but I'd end up staying a lot longer, which I'm not to crazy about. So for now, I'm just doing the two majors.

Favorite thing at JMU.....wow, that's a REALLY tough question. Obviously being a student I love the social scene here and how the majority of people are really into meeting everyone and not all about forming cliques and separating themselves. It's nice having all the apartment complexes within a pretty reasonable area to visit friends and party as opposed to other schools like Virginia Tech. I'm also from a small area, so being here at school with a high concentration of people is great because all the food places deliver really late, haha, which I take a big advantage of (pizza, Chinese, etc.). It's really tough to say overall, I'd have to say the mixture of all these things. The only thing I can really think of that I wish JMU had was an outdoor pool and being in a different town (Harrisonburg doesn't have what I consider a really nice downtown area to really walk around and see). I guess the first one is really the only one that can change though, haha.

My dream come true....That's a pretty tough question to answer as well. Over time dreams change. They change the more you discover yourself and begin to realize what you really want out of our life. You really begin to discover yourself and realize what you want in life the more you experience things, and right now in college, so I'm experiencing more than I ever have in my life in short amounts of time. So I'm not really sure if I've really had a dream come true. At the same time though I'm an extremely curious person and I love to learn knew things that fascinate me, which science is able to do. I'm also a believer in life should be more about the journey than the destination; so with that said I guess being in the kind of place I am at JMU that greatly assists me exploring several different avenues in life and feeding my curiosity is about as close to a dream come true as I could hope for at the time being.

My main focus the past few weeks I've been working as been on the isolation of the environment sample of B. avium. And things are coming along at the moment, slowly, but still moving. We have been unable to find a single antibiotic that will help me kill E. coli but not harm B. avium, so we have discovered a type of agar (the gel food in the petri dishes we grow them on) that has a mix of several components, which is supposed to do a great job in growing B. avium but deter the growth of several common bacteria including E. coli. I have also tested the method (not using this agar yet though) and we were able to get bacteria from the water and put it onto agar plates and lots of bacteria grew, so theoretically this can work.

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