Dear Mrs. Obama

Your speech resonated wonderfully with me. I love your enthusiasm for the family and the importance of it. I love your acknowledgment of faith and God's role in our lives. Thank you for your stirring words and the hope that they impart to me, as a young college student who aspires to go to graduate school and raise a family of my own in this wonderful country and to my God. I met your husband last August in Park City, and now I wish I had the chance to meet and learn from you. Blessings, Michelle

Kate

You're a part-time lover and a full-time friend

It's funny how turned upside down your life can get in a single day. Things seemed pretty solid until I started looking at graduate programs that are not in chemical education, but in molecular biology or biological chemistry. If I wanted to be competitive in applying to a program like this, I would have to write a personal statement that will "give evidence of a strong commitment to research," which I'm not sure I have. So I think, unfortunately that I'm going to have to give up my job as a TA (which I love dearly) and take a job in a research lab so that I can perhaps write a statement of commitment to research.

This has been an interesting thing to be thinking about; a program in traditional biochemistry or molecular biology would give me a lot more latitude as far as where I want to go for graduate school, and it wouldn't be hard to transition into a teaching profession with no research responsibility. I don't know. Nothing's in the bag, and the decision is far from being made.

I watched the film Juno yesterday. Definitely my favorite film so far. I laughed and cried and it was beautiful. I now have a copy of it being mailed to me from amazon.com. Love it.