Hello everyone,
I have a really long name so those who want to know it all, stay tuned, I'll sign off with it.
Anywho (that's my favorite term to start a topic these days), I am currently finishing up my thesis, in other words, I'm writing my results and getting ready to defend my research this summer. The past 5 years I have been working with a conservation head-start program trying to save a particular species of turtle, the Mississippi Diamondback Terrapin. Here in Alabama it has identified as a species of high concern for the federal government and we predict through MARK/Recap studies that we have less than 80 nesting female terrapins. Then 3 years ago I started my masters degree with the hatchlings we are raising in the lab. Mainly I am looking at lab effects on their fitness and growth. I want to know how my turtle develops and what type of life history strategy the terrapin utilizes. Meanwhile, I am also interested in the sex determining pathways. The terrapin do not have sex chromosomes so their sex determination is dependent upon temperature (aka: TSD). After I finish my thesis this summer I will be transitioning into a PhD program here at UAB.
During my PhD I plan to work with proteins and understanding heterochromatin genes. Once I get a foundation in this discipline, I want to bring it back to my terrapin and hopefully develop experiments that will allow me to understand any epigenetic regulations in the terrapin's sex determinating pathway.
When I'm not busy in the lab, or running between the 2 labs I work in currently, I am obsessed with teaching. Once I overheard a story to a faculty member here at UAB. There are students that will always excel no matter what, you cannot take credit for them. There are students that will always be difficult and they will not do well. You cannot berate yourself for those individuals, either. However, in the middle you have a set of students that you can claim, because of your teaching and hopefully good/scholarly teaching at that, you will affect them and they will be better and they will do better. Those are the students that count. I believe I came from that middle ground. A farm girl growing up, my family had no idea I would even contemplate college, much less attend. Afterall, I'm one of the first to graduate/attend high school. Yet I was never in the top category of active students, nor was I at the uninterested bottom portion either. Coming to college was a struggle and it took professors actively being interested in me as a person for me to realize my own self-confidence and my own scientific brain.
So that sums up #1, maybe not quite in a nut-shell but a good segue to #2. I hope to take from this class a better idea of how to teach and retain students like myself. I know as a teacher I don't have to worry about that upper portion of students who do well no matter what. I want to make sure that students who are not in that cohort, that don't even know they can learn, I want them to find out that they can learn, and that they enjoy learning. When I begin my PhD I want to coincide my lab research with teaching as research and this is a good place to get started with designing which questions to ask.
For #3, an interesting thing about myself that I have not already mentioned, I've been playing piano since I was 2 years old. Up until I came to college I competed professionally, but in college my piano playing slowed down to occasional fun time. Instead, someone decided I could sing and thus, I sang my way through my undergraduate career. However, I never majored in music, I received my BS in Biology with a minor in chemisty.
And lastly, I talk a lot, I type a lot, too. I just hope some of my enthusiasm rubs off on you dear reader.
Gracious Grebes,
Tandy Lauralin Dolin Petrov
I have a really long name so those who want to know it all, stay tuned, I'll sign off with it.
Anywho (that's my favorite term to start a topic these days), I am currently finishing up my thesis, in other words, I'm writing my results and getting ready to defend my research this summer. The past 5 years I have been working with a conservation head-start program trying to save a particular species of turtle, the Mississippi Diamondback Terrapin. Here in Alabama it has identified as a species of high concern for the federal government and we predict through MARK/Recap studies that we have less than 80 nesting female terrapins. Then 3 years ago I started my masters degree with the hatchlings we are raising in the lab. Mainly I am looking at lab effects on their fitness and growth. I want to know how my turtle develops and what type of life history strategy the terrapin utilizes. Meanwhile, I am also interested in the sex determining pathways. The terrapin do not have sex chromosomes so their sex determination is dependent upon temperature (aka: TSD). After I finish my thesis this summer I will be transitioning into a PhD program here at UAB.
During my PhD I plan to work with proteins and understanding heterochromatin genes. Once I get a foundation in this discipline, I want to bring it back to my terrapin and hopefully develop experiments that will allow me to understand any epigenetic regulations in the terrapin's sex determinating pathway.
When I'm not busy in the lab, or running between the 2 labs I work in currently, I am obsessed with teaching. Once I overheard a story to a faculty member here at UAB. There are students that will always excel no matter what, you cannot take credit for them. There are students that will always be difficult and they will not do well. You cannot berate yourself for those individuals, either. However, in the middle you have a set of students that you can claim, because of your teaching and hopefully good/scholarly teaching at that, you will affect them and they will be better and they will do better. Those are the students that count. I believe I came from that middle ground. A farm girl growing up, my family had no idea I would even contemplate college, much less attend. Afterall, I'm one of the first to graduate/attend high school. Yet I was never in the top category of active students, nor was I at the uninterested bottom portion either. Coming to college was a struggle and it took professors actively being interested in me as a person for me to realize my own self-confidence and my own scientific brain.
So that sums up #1, maybe not quite in a nut-shell but a good segue to #2. I hope to take from this class a better idea of how to teach and retain students like myself. I know as a teacher I don't have to worry about that upper portion of students who do well no matter what. I want to make sure that students who are not in that cohort, that don't even know they can learn, I want them to find out that they can learn, and that they enjoy learning. When I begin my PhD I want to coincide my lab research with teaching as research and this is a good place to get started with designing which questions to ask.
For #3, an interesting thing about myself that I have not already mentioned, I've been playing piano since I was 2 years old. Up until I came to college I competed professionally, but in college my piano playing slowed down to occasional fun time. Instead, someone decided I could sing and thus, I sang my way through my undergraduate career. However, I never majored in music, I received my BS in Biology with a minor in chemisty.
And lastly, I talk a lot, I type a lot, too. I just hope some of my enthusiasm rubs off on you dear reader.
Gracious Grebes,
Tandy Lauralin Dolin Petrov
