What's the matter with kids?!

I'm not having any luck at all with kids lately. Last Sunday I was teaching my primary class consisting of 5 year olds when I had a little girl try to steal from me (yes, I'm in primary- go ahead and laugh). I had CTR rings (ironically it stands for "Choose The Right") for each of the ten kids in my class. I explained to them I only had enough rings for each to have one for the entire year. Four kids weren't there, so I had four extra rings. One girl was very adamant about passing the rings out to everyone, so I let her. After she'd gone around the room and given everybody a ring, I saw her quickly stuff the four extra rings in various pockets. She then handed me back the empty box. When I asked her where the extra rings were, she said that there weren't any other rings. I told her there should be four extra rings for each of the missing class members. She then reluctantly pulled one extra ring out of a pocket and handed it to me. I asked her where the other three were, and she finally pulled them out of her various pockets and handed them back to me. This isn't the type of behavior I'd expect from a 5 year old. Maybe this next Sunday we'll have a special lesson on honesty.

As for other things in life, it's only the second week of classes and I'm already falling behind. I'm only taking two courses but am afraid they'll be my only preoccupation for the semester. I'm taking a great genomics class taught by Dr. Ferdig. I'm really enjoying that class; it's a bit scattered right now, but Dr. Ferdig really tailors the class to the students' needs. My other course is required for my GLOBES fellowship: it's called 'The History and Philosophy of Human Health and Environment,' which means it's about anything and everything and no one has a clue what to expect. It's every Monday from 6-9pm. So far, it's horrible. We are required to read 300+ pages of text every week plus 2 write-ups and other weekly projects. When we students brought up the heavy reading load, we were told to, "Man up and just do it." The instructor is a history professor, not a biology one. They read a lot in history, but in biology we read what we need to and spend a great deal of our time doing lab research. When some GLOBES biology professors looked at the syllabus, they got angry. They said 6-8 hours of reading a week is fine, but 40 hours is too much. They said they'd talk to the instructor about the coursework load. Hopefully it changes.

As for lab work, I've started working in Dr. McDowell's lab studying sand flies that transmit leishmania. They've really immersed me in the lab work: I've been spending a lot of time there and learning tons. I'm isolating RNA and making cDNA libraries of the salivary gland of the sand fly. It's exciting because I've never done RNA work before. Once we create a library from the different sand fly populations, we'll see if it's possible to create a vaccine against sand fly saliva and, hence, leishmaniasis. If I stay in Dr. McDowell's lab, this will be part of my project.

Not much else is going on. It's finally snowed enough to cover the grass, and it's gotten very cold. I've also decided not to invite that woman with her ill-behaved kids back to my house. I have to deal with other people's kids every Sunday, and that's plenty.