Hi, everyone! You can call me Adrian or Ren or any other variation of my username that suits your fancy! He/him pronouns, please. (I'm currently trying them out to see if they suit me; I mention that just for reference if things change in the future.) As you might guess at this point, I'm pretty sure I'm trans--I started questioning when I was ten, and I'm still questioning now (age 17). Topics that interest me...I'm all over the place, really. I'm always up for talking about trans stuff, particularly from a place of prolonged questioning and the many (many, many) 180-degree flips I've experienced in how I feel. I'm super interested in STEM stuff--compsci, civil engineering, physics/astrophysics, and investment analytics are my current fascinations--and I may pursue a degree in something on that list. I'm also incredibly interested in film/TV and theatre--I'm currently working on a script for a play, and I've also directed shows throughout high school. This is the other area of interest I'm potentially looking to pursue as a degree. Speaking of which--I'm currently in high school. (Boarding school, actually! Which is just dandy for trans kids. I really love the blanket assumption of heterosexuality and enforcement of the gender binary and lack of accommodation for LGBT+ people. Love it.) I'm about to start applying for college/university and am super excited and also very very nervous about this. (I know there aren't too many under-18s on here, but maybe at some point we could get a thread going about college, how to deal with the process of applying, writing essays, LGBT+ inclusion, etc.? Dunno, just a thought. Or maybe this already exists and I haven't found it yet? Anyway.) That's about it from me, I think--I'm excited to get to know you all.
Hey! It's great to have you here! I don't know if there's a thread about the college application process yet, but that'd probably be pretty handy for a couple people here. What's your play script going to be about, if you don't mind telling?
I'll work on starting something like that thread, then. Thanks! My script is still in the nebulous "what is this even" stage, but it's kind of an exploration into the mind of someone who spends nearly every waking moment wrapped up in their own imagination--detached from reality, obsessed with their own fantasy worlds, etc.--and how exhilarating that is for them, but also how much it damages them. I think it's going to be fairly tech-intensive (lots of lights and mobile scenery) with a kind of Greek chorus of eight or so people who act out what's going on in the protagonist's mind. (The protagonist spends much of the play sitting on their bed, which the chorus move around throughout the play. I'm not a choreographer, but I also want the chorus to have dancelike movements and sequences.) Plot-wise, there's going to be disruptions to the worlds the protagonist has created, with the 'real' world breaking in rudely, but also kind people who make an effort to connect. It's very much based on experiences I had as a young(er) person and it's kind of a cathartic thing to write.
yooooo I am going to briefly break my veneer of professionalism and maturity to excitedly greet you! because I am excited! this guy, everybody! this guy is great! (if you're wondering, he and I go to the same school. he is also the only non-family member I text on a regular basis.)
hello!! nice to meet you!! i remember seeing a personal thread or two about application woes, so at the very least you are not alone in that boat. i remember that boat and it was terrible.
hi! cool to see another boarding school person - I graduated last year, and I've been gap-year-ing (and applying to college) (because I failed to apply to college while I was in school bc of inconveniently timed anxiety disorders) (but now I'm all set and going to college in a month!) since. the school I went to recently adopted a unisex dress code, which I thought was pretty rad! even if people are up in arms about losing the tie requirement.
Eyyyyyy. Gonna have to right-back-atcha the "this guy is great!" sentiment, although y'all probably already figured that out. He's the one who inspired me to join up here, which, oops, I should've mentioned in my intro but didn't because I Am Bad.
It's a fairly uncomfortable boat. Too much turbulence, not enough free cocktails. (Virgin cocktails. I'm underage, y'all.)
I'm actually thinking of taking a gap year! I'm also suffering from inconveniently-timed anxiety, but mild enough that I can still work on apps. And congrats on enrolling, that's awesome! What are you interested in/what do you think you want to study? Yeah, our school has been making progress with de-gendering the dress code, although there are still lots of issues with uneven (gendered) enforcement.
Me too :D (Love it, in fact. I think eP communicated my initial reactions when he relayed my request to you--it was mostly helpless cackling because LOOK AT HIM WHAT A NERD HE'S SO PRECIOUS and his EYEBROWS are WORKS OF ART) (Anyway. Ahem. Thank you very much. I also now have something in my head when I imagine what I want to look like after T, so that's awesome.)
I'm so extremely glad I took a gap year - it really worked for me because I'd been panickily putting off looking at colleges for so long that if I had applied during my upper/senior year I would have just applied to the type of school I thought I Should Go To (crazy selective tech schools) instead of the type of school I realized, after deliberation, I was actually interested in going to (small! fairly chill! liberal arts! discussion-based classes plz!). I thought I would be so productive during my gap year, and I really.. haven't... but it was still worth it. I'm interested in studying computer science! And I spent a really long time denying that I liked biology but it turns out I have a secret love for it, esp. genetics, esp. in conjunction with comsci. Bioinformatics is my jam. Ugh, yeah - I hope the new dress code has made it better, but when I was there there was always that one asshole teacher who would lurk outside the dining hall on the first warm day of spring and yell at everyone whose shorts were too short. The dress code doesn't apply when you're not in class, asshole teacher!! Why can't you just enforce it in your own classes!! And can you not be so uncomfortably slut-shamey about the people you think are girls THANKS T's gonna give you big ram horns? Dude, I'm jealous :P
Yeah, I'm currently in the process of trying to disabuse myself of the notion that some schools are Good and others are Bad, and if I want a Future and Success and Happiness I must attend one of the Good otherwise I am in for a life full of disappointment, etc. The future STEM major in me is like "hell yeah you should go to an uber-selective technical school where you kill yourself with work or die trying" but the rest of me is like "but...English class is fun and remember the part where you also want to make movies and also what if I change my mind WHAT THEN" so small liberal arts schools are looking more and more appealing to me. It's so awesome that you were able to figure out what it is that you really wanted--I hope it works out well, and keep me/us posted as things develop! Ahhhh that's fantastic! I was part of a molecular bio summer program last year and, although pipetting things into other things is fun (not sarcasm, actually...I really do like it), I was really fascinated with parsing the code once it was sequenced. (We did DNA extractions from plants, amplified them, sent the amplified sequences to a DNA sequencing company, and then did sequence analysis using a program called FinchTV.) I love interdisciplinary stuff like this--when people figure out how to reconcile two things they like. Idk, it just makes me really happy :) Oh my god, we have that teacher too. Like, please stop. Please let female-presenting people show skin. Please don't sexualize young female bodies. Pls.
Whoop I saw "DNA extraction" and my attention was grabbed! Hi! (I'm a biology grad student in ecology/evolution who does a lot of bioinformatics and works pretty much exclusively with sequence data.) I hope you enjoy your time here!
Oooh, awesome! What are you working on specifically, if you don't mind me asking? And thanks--I'm having a great time already (although to be fair I should proooooobably be working on my civEng internship thesis right now, but, eh).
I'm in the microbiology world; I do metagenomic work, where we sequence a whole microbial community's DNA or RNA and then use that to learn about the community, make inferences about function, relate that to the environment, or try to reconstruct genomes of unculturable organisms. I'm currently looking at differences in average genome size between two aquatic communities (and trying to relate that to their different environments). It's a bit different than traditional genomics, but it's really interesting! And tough, because it's pretty new and so people don't really know yet the best way to do things, and there are always new programs/methods coming out. Sorry for rambling, and good luck on the thesis work!
Oh, fantastic! Do you use PCR? Shotgun? Form/function questions are FASCINATING and I wish I understood the field better! Good luck with your research!
