My day in the Levin lab usually varies. Some days I come into the lab and I have a few rats to harvest. Harvesting includes extracting the brain and spleen and liver from each rat (after they have died of course). Sometimes I am also in charge of putting the rats through the series of varies tests that we give them as mentioned in the protocol. These tests include tings like attention tasks, figure 8 mazes, and item recognition test.
The other half of my time in the lab is spent doing less glamorous things like feeding the rats, changing cages, washing cages, marking their tails and weighting them, and also getting bit every once in a while. But everything that one does in the lab cannot be completely glamorous. I am very glad that I get to do interesting things when the opportunity comes and the days usually go by pretty fast. My lab also uses Zebrafish but I never work with them. I usually see them only in passing.
Sometimes, we get fire drills because the cage wash causes the fire alarm to go off every once in a while and everyone has to stop what they’re doing to go outside and wait for the fire department to come. They usually look kind of annoyed. OOPS.
Well, that is usually some of the things that my days in the lab entail. I’ll be learning how to do surgery on the rats soon which might be fun.
Thanks for reading!
