Thursday, March 8, 2012

Thursday = Coffee Hour

Today is Thursday and that only means one thing: Coffee Hour.

Coffee Hour is a weekly ritual in our department, which some groups (including mine) see as a sort of sport. The groups with the best coffee hour have bragging rights and those who don't bring enough food for everyone or (worse) buy everything from the grocery store are shunned. Well, at least word gets around who has the best coffee hours and who doesn't. Groups try to outdo each other for coffee hour domination.

I will specifically plan my day around gorging myself on the good coffee hour days. Coffee hour may also substitute for dinner on days with IM sports or late lab/homework sessions. On mediocre Thursdays, I often begin counting down for coffee hour as early as 11 am. The greatness of coffee hour was passed on to me within my first week of being a grad student here. When I went to talk to the grad students in a group I was thinking about joining, I was told that I couldn't "go home yet because today is COFFEE HOUR." They started me early.

My group has coffee hour in a few weeks, and I'm already contemplating what I should be making. It's that intense. Maybe some sort of bar cookie/brownie or cupcake? To be continued...


Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Entering the blogosphere

Erm, yes. Hello there...internet. Can everybody hear me? Good, good.

I'm not exactly sure what's expected in a first post, so I'm kind of making this up as I go along. Also, I'm not really sure what the theme of this blog is going to be. The title sort of sums up what consumes a good amount of my time, so I figured that was a good start.

I'm a grad student surrounded by science on a daily basis, and I really like to bake. Not just cupcakes, though. Any sort of baked good is fair game. I figured that starting a blog would be a good creative outlet, which is often lacking in the world of science and engineering. I've found that I have a lot on my mind lately and thought that maybe putting it down all in once place would help me make some sense of it. Or not. You know, either way. Regardless, I'm hoping that you'll read, laugh, and maybe empathize a little bit, especially if you are a graduate student. We've got to stick together, people.

Cheers until next time!