Posts by Chris Tom

Chris Tom

After the Glow: Losing New Relationship Energy In Grad School

December 13, 2012 | By Chris Tom, Ph.D. Student, Chemical Biology

It's strange for a person such as myself to be lonely. It's not to say that I'm not capable of it or I'm effortlessly popular, but rather that I work really hard to fill my life with the company of people whose company I enjoy. I'm good like that. But I am old enough to look back at my life now and notice trends. I've moved and changed schools many times over the course of my life. I went from performing arts middle school to public high school to boarding school to college to grad school to dropping out of…

Published in: Student Voices

Chris Tom

A Case for Sustainability and Saving Ourselves

August 15, 2012 | By Chris Tom, Ph.D. Student, Chemical Biology

We live in amazing times. Consider this: only two hundred years ago, a French chemist named Pierre Adet confirmed that vinegar (5% acetic acid) and glacial acetic acid (100% acetic acid) are the same thing. Just a hundred years ago, we discovered the atom and the theory of relativity. Things are speeding up. Rapidly. The future is now. New technologies are redefining what we thought possible in medicine and physics. Researchers have now found that you can teach a mouse a simple trick, and then by adding hydrogen sulfide - previously thought to be a toxic and noxious gas, and…

Published in: Student Voices

Chris Tom

Use your tools: a personal account of a pre-candidacy nervous breakdown

July 24, 2012 | By Chris Tom, Ph.D. Student, Chemical Biology

Background (I will eventually stop giving this, but for the time being it is fairly relevant): I am a first-year in the Program in Chemical Biology. Since the relaxing of the Rackham restrictions, I am going to be the first person in my program to take candidacy in their first year. Additionally, I have my very own REU minion for the summer, and she's doing great work spearheading a project that I didn't have time to work on my own. Like most things I do, she's a rewarding time commitment. Also, I'm the Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee for…

Published in: Student Voices

Chris Tom

Writing [on a deadline] or more correctly: Deadlines [some of which are writing]

July 11, 2012 | By Chris Tom, Ph.D. Student, Chemical Biology

Imagine, if you will, a vague sense of dread permeating your every moment. Gaze around your metaphysical landscape, and you see the looming threat of semi-mechanical beings of your own construction returning to bury you under the weight of your industry. The big ones are well past the horizon now, but they are louder than they are fast. It's the incessant jangling and clanking of them approaching that keeps you up at nights, though you have calculated exactly how long it is until they reach you. It's the little ones that are the worst, because they are spry and spritely…

Published in: Student Voices

Chris Tom

Summer in Ann Arbor

June 13, 2012 | By Chris Tom, Ph.D. Student, Chemical Biology

Tom Robbins once said (ahhhh, yes this is the beginning of so many sweet statements) in Jitterbug Perfume that one of the secrets to long life is going back and forth between very hot and very cold temperatures. It's yoga for the capillaries, weightlifting for the arteries, detoxifying mudbath for the liver, etc. The Swedes do it in their saunas, the Japanese in their hot tubs, those monkeys from Baraka do it in hot springs. John Muir did it on the steam vents atop Mount Shasta, and he accomplished more in his lifetime with less on their backs than most…

Published in: Student Voices

Chris Tom

Meet Our Bloggers: Chris Tom

May 31, 2012 | By Chris Tom, Ph.D. Student, Chemical Biology

The first time around, graduate school was an expectation. Not going wasn't an option that I seriously considered; it was only a question of where I would go and what project I would work on. I grew up in a household where my father earned his Ph.D. under a future Nobel Laureate, and my mom was a double Master’s. So when I received my acceptance letter from UC Berkeley to study chemistry, I went off without a second thought. For three years the strength of expectations, a dangerous form of blind faith, kept me along the path. I designed my…

Published in: Student Voices

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