Category: Announcements

ABD

William 7 Comments

I am finally “all but done.” Usually this means that a graduate student is done with course work and can focus on research for the rest of their graduate career. It also means that they have officially been admitted to candidatecy. (If you want to get all philosophical, it marks the transition from a consumer of knowledge to a producer of knowledge.) Me? I’ve been done with course work for a long time, but two transfers, a hurricane, a “special student admission” and a laboratory move created a unique situation. It doesn’t matter now. Simply put, it’s all downhill from here. Pretty soon I will sit down with a committee and we will determine just how much more data I need to graduate.

For those that don’t know, here is the story. I transfered from Cornell before reaching the point I could take their exam. At TU I was missing one course; It ended the semester before I arrived and was only offered every other year. Hurricane Katrina hit at the beginning of the semester the next time it was offered. I finished my course work at UT Southwestern, where my lab temporarily setup after Katrina. A year later, after returning to a barely functioning TU that had completely restructured its’ graduate program and couldn’t decide how to proceed with qualifying exams, my lab moved to UCHSC. As a condition of my transfer to UCHSC, I had to take their exam, which consisted of two parts: a written exam based on coursework and a grant proposal and defense. The fact that I didn’t actually take any of their coursework only made it more interesting. I took the written portion this past summer and defended my proposal this past Friday.

Fields/ Campbell Wedding Photos

William 1 Comment

As you know, Kyllan and I attended the wedding of two close friends this past weekend. I finally went through of the photos and picked out some to share with you. It was a packed weekend. There was a welcome party on Thursday, complete with dancing girls and a fire dancer. Friday morning Jamaal’s dad took the groomsmen and some close friends and family to play golf. Of course Friday also included the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. The wedding on Saturday was beautiful. It looked like it wanted to rain, but as soon as Maya started down the isle the clouds went away. Both the bride and groom cried like a babies, causing me to lose a side bet I had with Neil. (He gave me good odds, I couldn’t pass it up.) The reception was crazy! People danced all night. Check out the pictures here.


Caroline Cody

William

I was unable to make a post this past weekend due to the $14 an hour charge for internet at the resort in the Jamaica. This Saturday would have been my sister’s 30th Birthday. A few days before his wedding, Jamaal asked if the groomsmen could all wear orange ribbons in her memory. Orange was Caroline’s favorite color and, like at our wedding, friends and family often wear the ribbons on special occasions. I don’t have the words to explain how much it means to me that others are helping my family keep my sister’s memory alive.

Please take a few minutes to read the post I made on Caroline’s birthday last year to learn more about what is being done to preserve her memory here.

Comments have been turned off for this post. If you would like to share your thoughts and memories of Caroline, please call or e-mail me or my parents. We would love to hear from you.

The lost 7/7/07 Post

William 9 Comments

I really meant to make a post on 7/7/07. I was going to tell everyone how it had been such a lucky week for the Cody family. For those who missed it, the 2nd was my mother’s last chemo treatment. On the 6th I found out that I passed my qualifying exam at Colorado. For those that don’t know, I transfered from Tulane to Colorado (it’s just easier now that the lab is here). Passing their exam was a condition of the transfer and I was a little nervous about it, considering that I hadn’t taken a course from any of the professors giving it. I had been waiting for about 20 days to hear back from the university. (If you don’t know what the qualifying exam is, you can think of it like boards for a physician or the bar for lawyers).

Kyllan and I saw “knocked up,” “Oceans’ 13” and “Transformers” in the theaters and watched “Music and Lyrics” and “Stomp the Yard” on DVD while was in town. “Knocked up” was hilarious. It’s been a long time since I laughed that hard in a theater. I thought “Oceans’ 13” was just barely just okay, but Kyllan liked it. “Transformers” was a little campy, but I still found it very entertaining. “Music & Lyrics” was formulaic, but not necessarily predictable. For a chic flick, it was pretty good. “Stomp the Yard” was horrible. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 0.5 (p<.001). I would tell you why it is so bad, but it is not worth my time to even type it out. It's back to work this week. I've been having some success in the lab recently. With the new found motivation that has come with knowing the exam is behind me, hopefully I will experience some more. Below is the mandatory photo from our trip. It is a picture of the board game "Scene It," which I beat Kyllan at three times in a row. More photos of the trip are on my flickr, including a couple of my nephew Drew, who told his Aunt KyKy that the two of them had brown thumbs and I had yellow… He later asked me if I was white..

I can't be beaten

Class of 2007

Kyllan 1 Comment

A long overdue congratulations to all of the graduates! William already made a post about his two Xavier classmates that graduated from Medical School. I had the opportunity to attend two graduations the past few weeks… one for my high school classmate, Desiree, who earned a Master’s in Humanities and one for my cousin, Shannon, who earned a Bachelor’s in Communication. I have pictures from Shannon’s graduation on my flickr page.

Shannon

100 days until the wedding!!

Kyllan 6 Comments

Only 100 days to go and I am definitely getting more excited with each passing day, although I will say I am even more excited about what happens beyond day 100 as William and I start our new life as a married couple. I was able to attend the wedding of my linesister, Courtney, over the Memorial Day weekend and it was beautiful. I had a great time witnessing the marriage of two people who love each other so much and spending time with my crazy but wonderful linesisters again!!(I posted pictures on my flickr account). It is kinda weird to see ourselves and our friends getting older and getting married, buying homes, and having children (congrats Joscelyne!), yet extremely exciting as we venture out into “new territory”. I wish everyone much success, courage, and happiness as we take those bold steps.

ASM 2007

William 5 Comments

I am currently in Toronto for the American Society for Microbiology General Meeting. If you noticed the lack of posting or my comments the past few days, it because I was gathering data up until the last minute for my presentation. Everything came out pretty well and I am excited about the meeting. I doubt that any of you would actually get all that excited about anything going on here, so I will wait until I return to give a recap. I’ll be pretty busy with events at the conference, so I am afraid there won’t be to many pictures.

The Drs. Lewis

William 2 Comments

Congratulations to Neil and Tami on their recent medical school graduation. You can read all about it on Neil’s blog, The Chronicles of NL. He posted pictures to his website and his flickr. You should also check out the pictures of their son. Other than this post, links can be found in the right hand sidebar. For those who don’t know, Neil is one of my closest friends and will be a groomsmen in my wedding, just as was one in his. (As always, I don’t use full names in post. Eventually the post are indexed by google’s search engine, and I don’t want to help anyone’s ex stalk them. If every there was an occasion, this would be it. Congratulations again.)