A typical day in my lab life involves me getting to lab at around 9am. After I arrive at lab I precede to go to my desk and put down my things. If I have any questions to ask my mentor, I will usually go find him at his desk or working on a rat. Most of the day I spend working on the model that I am building for him that combines asynchronous fiber activation and neuron firing. He needs this so that he knows what to look for in the rats that he works on. Right now I am at the point in which my model has to run a huge amount of data through it and analyze it into a graph. This means that a large portion of my day is consumed by running my code and analyzing the output to see if it looks right. However, I am learning so much about coding from this experience.
Some days I work on histology. Histology is where a sample of tissue is cut out of the body, in this case spinal tissue, and it is sectioning into little pieces so that they can be looked at under a microscope. The histology that I do is useful because after the tissue is stained the area that was pierced with the electrode will change color which allows us to see where the electrode pierce the tissue and how far down the electrode went. A lot of histology is about patience because you have to flip each layer of the tissue before mounting it to the slide. Even though this is a mindless practice it is nice to have when I am doing intense coding most of the day.
Outside of my work, I get to hear interesting problems faced by grad students who have found jobs, but need to make a decision that will affect their entire lives. This is cool to hear because I can learn from their experiences and hopefully get as many cool offers as them. In all, I really enjoy working in the Grill lab and hope my good times continue.
