Today, Lesley walked me through the steps of transformation, and so I'm qualified to do it on my own the next time. We also had journal club today (for our lab), but instead of a real journal club meeting, it was Christina presenting her previous research during journal club time. It was really fascinating (my first official presentation, because Danielle's presentation didn't have any background info, so everything was over my head and I was pretty lost), partially because there was background info, so I could follow her presentation. She did work with mitochondrial supercomplexes, and wanted to see the fluidity of the formation and degradation. Also, by serum-starvation, she was able to induce the increase in free-form complexes and the number of individual units, while seeing a decrease in the number of larger complexes.
Other than those two things, I did a lot of sitting at my cubicle, trying to digest this review paper. It's been a week and a day, and I'm just about halfway through with it. I got stuck on this one paragraph for a whole hour, trying to google every other word (because I absolutely do not have the background needed for this paper). Finally, I realized since Alicia was the primary author, and she was in the cubicle quad right next to my cubicle quad, I just walked up and asked her to explain the paragraph. She and Jeni then took that confusing paragraph that made me tear out my hair all of yesterday and today, and put it into a few simple signal pathways and diagrams. They are magical.
After the thunderstorm yesterday, today was so much cooler, with a high of 80 degrees, at least 15 degrees cooler than the "normal" day here. Right after lunch, I looked out the window in my cubicle quad, and the sky looked so blue, the sun was shining brightly, and the wind was blowing so that the leaves on the trees danced. I was fidgety, and so I took a waterbottle and nearly bolted out of the building. Thankfully I didn't have too much lab work today, so I could afford to go outside, but I'm so glad I did. It was truly the perfect summer day: the sun was just the right warmth, there was a cool, gentle breeze, and the sky was breathtakingly blue.
I met up with Hanna at the tennis court at Building 60, but that was occupied, so we walked off campus a few blocks down, to the park where Jon and I had played tennis last week. Both courts were occupied, and Hanna and I were about to discuss what we were going to do (call off tennis for today or wait for a court to free up) when I realized that Jon was playing at one of the courts with a friend of his. He had told me in the lab yesterday, that he was playing with a friend, but it wasn't something I had remembered until I was reminded of it, seeing him at the courts. He offered Hanna and me to play doubles, and so the next 45 minutes or so were spent hitting a ball back and forth, 4 people, one ball, and then starting a set. Janet was Jon's friend, and she is good and so is Jon. Hanna is very good (she told me she plays club tennis), but all in all, it was fun. I just need to get a lot of hitting in, just to practice getting used to having a racket in my hand. Today, in that one hour, I started to get in the hang of doubles formation again, I really got to practice volleys (none of my "volleys" were actually volleys and all of them I hit out), serves, and on top of that, it was fun. Not the comradeship felt when just hitting the tennis ball back and forth between 4 people, but the gritty concentration that comes out of being able to take a tennis match with just enough seriousness, without it being too much.
We all hit good shots, we all hit bad shots, but in the end, we all walked away from our 4 games played really treasuring the experience.
The people in my lab, the people I meet from outside of my lab...I may have had qualms about meeting people (and I'm not going to deny the fact that I still feel a little nervous), they have all been for naught, because everyone here is just so incredibly friendly, but they are also such distinct characters with specific mannerisms and interests. The people I meet here are from all walks of life, from all different cities and states and countries, but we're all here because of our dedication to science.
Each day, I'm more and more amazed at how incredible NIH really is. Today at lunch, Hetal was telling me about how NIH gives out many of the research grants, and the PI on staff at NIH do have a little easier access to these grants for their research. NIH is definitely the hub of all funding for science and here I am, with the third week drawing to an end soon, slowly uncovering the true breadth of NIH. I suppose it's for the better though because, fed in small doses of information and manifestations, I am not overwhelmed by the sheer weight of this internship, this institution, the fact that I am, despite only for the summer, a part of this keystone organization.
I walked with Hanna back through the NIH campus to the metro station. On our way there, we saw two deer. The second one we saw was behind a building, but the first one casually crossed the road and was perfectly fine being less than 5 feet away from people. I took my phone out to quickly take some pictures. After I had put my phone away, Hanna just laughs and comments on how touristy I am. I tell her, I've seen deer before, I just didn't expect to encounter them on the NIH campus, especially because the campus is gated all around. And it is a little weird. Where would the deer come from and where would they stay while on the campus? As we continued our walk to the station, she regaled me with a story about how last year, a black bear cub was found on the NIH campus, and that was the talk of the week.
Once I got to my stop, I accidentally took the wrong exit out of the train station, but this error allowed me to stumble across a Krispy Kreme! Clearly DCians might not think Krispy Kreme is a big deal, but back at home, where the nearest Krispy Kreme doesn't exist for miles, this is a momentous time in history, worth two seconds of looking extremely touristy as I take out my phone to snap a photo.
Tomorrow, my mentor gets back, so new experiments await!
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