Wow! I'm not deficient!

In the not-Intelligent Design related category, it's time for a little blogging about starting grad school.

Today, I got to meet with the graduate instruction committee. Those are the folks who look at your transcripts, examine the results of a series of diagnostic exams (three four-hour exams taken in a three-day period), and try to figure out what you suck at. Then they tell you how much work, above and beyond the normal requirements, they are going to make you do to fix things.

After I finished the cell and molecular diagnostic on Thursday, I was convinced that I had bombed the exam - and when I think I suck at something, I'm usually right. A third of the exam was on the topic of signal transduction, which I know almost nothing about. Another third covered cell structure for animal cells, and I never can remember what the hell the Golgi Complex does. One out of three ain't bad as a batting average, but outside of Organic Chemistry it doesn't usually fly.

So imagine my shock when I meet with the GIC today, and am told that I passed. I still can't figure it out. Maybe they got my papers mixed up with someone else, or maybe they looked at my stuff late at night and half-drunk. I've really got no idea. But I'm not going to complain.

Now all I have to do is figure out what I want to take.