A Montreal Rebel Saying Hi!

[Viasynth]

Well, it's official, I've enlisted to the NF Rebellion and am here to introduce myself to my fellow rebels!  I'm a grad student in Montreal and, although I've been overweight since I can remember, enough is enough.  I've watched my parents and grandparents struggle with their weight, and all the health complications that came along with it, and always thought "I'll be in better shape by the time I'm their age" or "they're just in worse shape than me".  Well, it's time for a reality check - I'm not even 30 and I've already got the beginnings of arthritis, my lumbar spine is compressing my sciatic nerves and I get winded when I walk more than one flight of stairs - and it's all because I've been ignoring my health! So today, I'm putting myself out there and starting the long and almost definitely winding journey towards getting my health in order. I want to become stronger, more powerful and most importantly, healthier!  And I'll be looking to you folks to help me keep accountable!

 

I've always been a huge science nerd, which is why I've ended up in a PhD program, and I'm a massive book worm, movie lover and connoisseur of all things horror. Today I'm adding fitness to my nerd resume and I'm excited to get started!

 

 

 

 

[dismantlerepair]

Hello fellow science nerd! What kind of science do you work on? I'm about to start a PhD program myself!

 

Best of luck in your fitness journey~

[Viasynth]

Hi there!

 

I'm a molecular neuroscientist, what's your particular flavor of science?  

 

And good luck on your fitness and PhD journey too!

[dismantlerepair]

Just now, Viasynth said:

Hi there!

 

I'm a molecular neuroscientist, what's your particular flavor of science?  

 

And good luck on your fitness and PhD journey too!

 

THAT'S SO COOL OMG PLEASE TELL ME MORE. /nerd

 

I study molecular biology, and in undergrad, my work focused on the regulatory effects of phosphorylation of a particular protein in yeast. In grad school, though, I definitely want to pursue the investigation of signaling (whether by phosphorylation, or ligand/receptor, or any other mechanism really) in a relatively small model organism (flies would be the largest thing I'd be willing to work with - I pass out involuntarily at the sight of blood so mouse work is a nono), so that opens me to quite a range of possibilities. I'm super excited to explore! Could you tell me a bit more about what you do? Molecular neuroscience sounds AWESOME. (I've definitely thought about neuro, but am concerned that too much of it would require me to deal with brains. ><)

[Viasynth]

Tons of people do neuro in smaller organisms! Flies, nematodes, zebrafish are all great places to learn different aspects of how the nervous system works.  For me, the brains are the best part though haha. I work in human post mortem tissue and I look at epigenetic mechanisms in people who died with psychiatric conditions.  It's a pretty unique thing to work on and I definitely thought I'd be weirded out by the whole blood thing too but the science was just too cool to resist! 

 

 

[dismantlerepair]

Valid point. But, the training in background knowledge you may have to get, and the conferences/research you might end up viewing may be a lot more brain-y than I could handle, unfortunately. (I once spent part of a lecture on apoptosis - which was not part of a course, I attended voluntarily and out of pure curiosity - sitting curled up into a ball in the hallway because of the dead tissue photos the speaker included. I asked him at the start to warn me if/when anything like that was coming up so I could step out. Otherwise a super interesting lecture...) Your job sounds crazy! I couldn't do it but that must be fun!

 

Personally I was somewhat interested in studying the genetics behind psychiatric conditions such as depression/anxiety, because that hits a bit close to home and it'd be awesome if I had a sciencey understanding of what-the-hell-is-my-brain-doing-making-me-feel-so-shit, but I realized that was much more computational than I like. So signaling in general I settled on, and hopefully I'll end up with some random interesting applications as well. I'm really in it for the science. If someone happens to pay me for it, I think that's strange, but awesomely convenient.

 

Also I took a course on epigenetics during college (unfortunately during a semester at the start of which I suffered a head injury that left me a little bit off my rocker for over a year following), and I thought that was definitely super cool. I liked the format of a graduate-level course better than the typical "memorize this and spit it back out" format of undergrad ones, and our final exam was basically just a "set up a big experiment to answer x y and z" multi-part question. Fuunnnnnn stuffffff.