Now that I have comfortably settled into my routine at the Patek lab, my days have drastically changed since my first week in the lab. During my introduction to the lab, I spent most of my days reading papers that the lab had published, talking through them with my immediate supervisor, and attempting to orient myself with my lab and my colleagues in the lab. However, since our trip to the Smithsonian where we gathered many photographs of mantis shrimp specimens, my days are a bit different now.
I generally arrive at the lab around 10am, depending on if we have had a Howard Hughes meeting that morning. I spend my first five minutes in lab unpacking my laptop, charger, water bottle, and the tablet that has become my best friend over the last couple of weeks. After everything is plugged in, I dive right into digitizing the photographs that we took at the Smithsonian. This basically involves placing dots along the various parts of the mantis shrimp’s appendage, so that a computer program can later compare all of the photographs against each other. While this task takes up the bulk of my days lately, I also enjoy taking breaks every once in a while to talk through problems with the other lab members and I help with filming high-speed videos of one of the mantis shrimp every once in a while.
One thing that I did not expect going into this experience was how relaxed the lab’s atmosphere is. While everyone spends their days working on their own projects, if anyone in the lab is stuck on their problem the other members of the lab are always more than happy to try to help. Often when I look up from my lab bench, I see a few of my colleagues standing in front of a white board together discussing something related to one of the projects within the lab. In addition, during our weekly lab meetings, everyone constantly asks for ideas from the other lab members and takes their colleagues’ suggestions to heart. For example, last Friday I gave my practice Chalk Talk to everyone in my lab, and afterwards they all gave me great input on how I could improve my talk and they really boosted my confidence and made me feel like part of the team. I have greatly enjoyed my experience in the lab so far, and I can’t wait to see what happens in my next month here.
