Decisions, decisions...

Lately I've been thinking a lot and trying to figure out what I'm going to do after graduation. While it seems like the future is lightyears away, it's not. Soon we'll all have to make choices about what we want to do with our lives. That's pretty scary. However, I've come to conclusion that the University of Michigan is where I want to be.

 

 

I've visited quite a few times and it seems more like home every time I go. While I do love this class, it's made me realize that science isn't really for me. It's interesting and fun but I don't think I can make a career out of it that I'd be happy with. While I have my mind up about which college I wish to attend, I haven't made up my mind about my major. I'm going to go into my freshman year undecided and then declare when I feel comfortable with what I'm doing. It's a big decision to make but I feel good about it. I might as well get my gen eds out of the way and then settle down into a specific field. I think I'll double minor as well. Maybe do a foreign language as one of my minors? I'm not quite sure yet. What I do know is that I have some big decisions ahead of me but I'm glad I still have some time to figure it all out.

VOTE RIBOSOMES 2012!

Vote Ribosomes for president of the cell! Recently in our AP Biology class we had an "Organelle War". We were all partnered up and were assigned an organelle to campaign for. My partner and I were assigned Ribosomes! Ribosomes are incredibly important because they make all the proteins which are vital to all organisms. They work through a process called Protein Synthesis. Ribosomes are responsible for translating the DNA from the nucleus into the amino acid sequences and then pairing up the amino acids to form the proteins. There are many specialized proteins that do really important jobs. For example, enzymes help break substances down. Without these enzymes processes such as digestion wouldn't be able to happen. We used mediums such a twitter, our blogs, and word of mouth to get our message across. We had a campaigning day in class in which we were able to hop out in to the pod and set up a station. All groups were present and our only goal was to garner as many votes as possible. My wonderful partner, Emily, even ended up rapping to get people to come to our station! We had some videos playing and a poster with which we could present. We even ended up having a mini debate with the Nucleus and Mitochondria. We made a campaign video as well. Overall, this project was a fun way to learn about the relationships between different organelles and about some of the traits that make the organelles important.

To visit Emily's blog, visit http://theramblingsofanapbiostudent.blogspot.com/. It's a good read. I promise.

To see what we were up to on Twitter, check out @RaRa_Ribosomes and #shscellwar.

My Macromolecule

If I had to be a macromolecule I would choose to be a nucleic acid. I think nucleic acids are really important because they are the basis of all genes. Nucleic acids are normally found in the nucleus but they are also present in both living and nonliving organisms. Nucleic acids are pretty big macromolecules. As far as structure goes they are usually a single helix (RNA) or a double helix (DNA). However, there have been instances of some organisms forming up to 3 or 4 stranded nucleic acids. The information stored within nucleic acids is crucial to all organisms because it contains the "instructions" for making proteins and these proteins go out to do various jobs including catalyzing enzyme reactions and transferring information for gene expression. The nucleic acids and proteins work together to set the foundation for the rest of the cell to do work.