Book 1: Settling into Life Day 2 (June 8, 2015)

First day at NIH! I arrive there, a little flustered because the Metro and NIH campus were all so new, but I manage to make it through the security (because I don't have my badge yet) and I miraculously find Katie's office (she'll be my Office Manager for the summer). There, she gives me a brief rundown of the program, hands me a folder filled with two big packets, and then takes me down to the lab where I'll be working at. There, I met my mentor and he assigned me to a cubicle and sat me down with an enzyme ordering manual. He mentioned a few things and the word appendix caused a little ding in my head, but I decided I would try to tackle the manual front to back. Plus I forgot about the appendix two minutes after he left me there. My memory retention is pretty bad right now...

Bad idea. I sat there for the whole day not having a single clue on what these words meant and I ended up googling every other word. Then I decided I should probably refresh myself on restriction enzymes in general, along with proteins, so that took a while. After lunch, I went back to studying, but an hour in, I was given antibodies and I had to put information into a spreadsheet on each of them. There were around 50 and at first it was difficult learning the "lingo," but I eventually got the hang of it. I had a badging appointment at 4pm. Since I was in the middle of cataloging antibodies still, I just put them back in the fridge and walked to Building 10. I didn't know how to find the badging room, but by asking around, I managed to. There was a little bit of a wait, so as I sat down, I started talking to the person sitting next to me. Her name is Anna and she is a summer intern from Spain. She's older than me by a bit, so she's an adult, but she's really really nice! She actually works in Building 37, which is next to my building and is connected underground by a tunnel. That tunnel is like a food pathway, and she was telling me about how she saw some tea places. We exchanged facebook contacts and we will hopefully go get some tea on a lunch break together sometime! I was really happy I was able to make a friend, and Anna is my first friend at NIH.

During the badging appointment, I found out that I was missing a parental consent form (I never got it...) so I couldn't get my badge until then. I was given a hard copy and told when it was filled out, I should schedule an appointment at Building 31, and it would all be taken care of then. So I left Building 10 badgeless, but with one friend.

I went back to antibodies, I finished, and then studied for the rest of the time. Work was done at 6:45pm, really late, but that's generally how all days will be. I'm not complaining, because I do go to work relatively later too, arriving at work around 10am.

And now for some pictures:

The building I work at. It still amazes me how big and beautiful it really is, steel and glass and aesthetically pleasing.

The view of the lab from my cubicle. It looks as professional as it really is.

Antibodies and secretarial work (that also demands a working knowledge of antibodies and what IgG means and mAb and nondyslexic eyes/minds).

Just a picture of the train station on my way home.