Greetings internet!
Wow, to think that it’s been a week already…
And to make things sound even more ephemeral, we are continuously reminded that our 8 weeks will fly by just like that. Keeping that in mind, I hope I can at least do the following things:
- Do something I’ve never done before. From my first week, I’ve already learned
- seeding-inserting these extremely tiny seeds into a plate with a probe
- how to use the autoclave
- how to tell census seeds, determining if arabidopsis seeds (as tiny as poppy seeds) has germinated
- how to prepare a PEG (polyethylene glycol) solution
Hello PEG..I shall see more of you this summer.. - how to use an osmometer
- how to prepare a plate I’ll be using for my project
preparing the weigh boats that will be wrapped in filter paper and then inserted into the plates Just a week ago, I felt like a lost little lamb, able to do nothing…now I’m probably still a lamb (insert “bahh” sound here), but it feels reassuring knowing that I’ll be growing and experiencing everything NEW in these next 7 weeks
- Answer Questions: As Dr. Grunwald explained to us in the beginning, I don’t expect to be answering science’s biggest mysteries this summer. Right now, the questions I’m focusing on are “What does that mean?”, “Why does that happen?”, “How do I do that?” At the very least, I want to develop an understanding of what I am doing and why I am doing it. And for me, the process of finding the answer is just as important. I know I’m responsible on my part for being more bold and asking the qualified mentors around me. Finally, the most important question I want to try to answer is: What do I want to be? Sure we all learn science in the classroom, but I want to see how it’s applied in the real world, and research is definitely one of the major applications. As someone who’s never done research before, being able to do this program is opening my eyes and allowing me to see a day in the life of the researcher. Who knows, maybe by the end, I’ll know my career path.
- Make friends with my Howard Hughes fellows and the people in my lab: (because who doesn’t want friends)
All jokes aside, I really do want to build relationships with all these talented people around me. - Have fun: Of course, I saved the cheesiest one for last.
