why I came
Christmas came early this year. Not by much, but still early. My textbook for next semester's course in "insect molecular genetics" arrived in the mail today, and it basically contains every reason I went back to graduate school.
I can only hope that the class as a whole follows the preface to the text. Evolution, expression, parasitism, development, transmogrification... everything a budding young scientist out to create an army of transgenic monsters could want to begin his plans for world domination. It isn't the hands-on manual that I need just yet, but it is a good review of the literature as a whole, and a starting point for the direction I would rather have had my graduate career travel.
There is even a section on the value of negative and positive controls in an experiment, which implies that I am not alone in assuming their importance to a study.
So I hope to continue to be happy about these developments. If nothing else comes of it, the book is a good fun read. Which I think says a lot more about me and what I'd like to be working on and working with than it does about the text.