Day Nineteen

First day of orientation. It was long and exhausting. Woke up at 7am (ugh), left at 8:20am, and enjoyed 40 minutes of early Austin traffic to get to campus. It wasn't too bad though, Austin drivers in the morning are more subdued than later in the day...apparently road rage slowly builds as the day progresses? I'm not sure, but I didn't have to slam my brakes once this morning (which can not be said for my drive home in the afternoon). I swear, in the almost 3 weeks I've been in Texas I've had to slam on my brakes more times than I ever did the entire time I was driving in Washington. No wonder there's so many auto accidents here.

Since my building is in the middle of campus, where no cars are allowed to go (there are even guard stations to ensure this), the closest parking space I could get to was 3 blocks away in a parking garage. Luckily, I got to campus with 30 minutes to spare before orientation started so this wasn't a problem. Also lucky, my building (Welch Hall) is right next to the UT Tower, which is visible from basically everywhere. If that tower didn't exist I would never find my way to Welch, it's like my north star. 

Orientation today was almost entirely seminars, and by the last seminar I was dangerously close to nodding off. We heard an overview of the program, listened to a faculty panel, learned how to be a successful graduate student (study and manage your time well...I never would have guessed), and went through advising for classes. And I also learned what my teaching assignment is. I'll be teaching a lab section of upper division analytical and instrumental analysis for non-chemistry majors (which consists of mainly biochem and chemical engineering majors). That's not intimidating at all. These students will only be 1-2 years younger than me. Super.

Teaching assignment. Eek!

Even though I had advising today, I still have no clue what I'll be taking. All I know is that one of my three courses this fall has to be an advanced analytical class where we review everything we need to know for our big 2nd year qualifying exams. Other class options are...Electrochemistry, Advanced Immunology, Biomedical Pharmacology, Fundamentals of Toxicology, and Advanced Medicinal Chemistry. There's actually like 50 other class options (since we're allowed to take classes from any graduate science program, not just chemistry), but these are the ones that looked the most interesting to me. Looks like a piece of cake, right? Not so much.

My first event tomorrow morning is fire extinguisher training. For an hour. Do you think they'll set a fire for me to practice putting out? I'm both intrigued and slightly terrified by this possibility. Then, two more seminars and a three-hour lab safety training session. Dream come true.