Book 1: Settling into Life Day 4 (June 10, 2015)

Oh badge appointments, how I love thee. But actually I do. It's helped me meet one person and I definitely got to interact with a few more. The whole process took less than 10 minutes, but I was there for 2 hours today, thanks to the crazy wait time. During then, I managed to talk to this older guy, striking up conversation with a snarky comment "do I have to move up in these chairs too?" as a reference to how we got chastised for not moving up seats in the first line we had to go through, as well as starting a conversation with this boy who sat next to me. He had his parental consent forms too, so I knew he was around my age, and we got into a very animated talk about colleges and standardized tests and majors and not knowing what to do with life. He had assumed I was from the Maryland area, so he started spewing some local jargon for neighborhood names, I think, until I told him I was not from the area. He was probably originally frustrated at my confused looks.

I got called in, and I didn't get a chance to ask for his name or contact info. So after my appointment was finished, I waited outside for 7 minutes to try to catch him and get his facebook profile, so we could keep in touch. He's at a different NIH campus, so I'll probably never get to see him, but he is from this area and we can always talk about college and our NIH experience. If anything, I'm just happy I made a friend. I can count the amount of friends I've made on one hand. It's not very many, but I'm still working on it.

I just love badge appointments. Within the two I've had, I've met two people I'll be able to keep in touch with over Facebook. Now to start meeting people in my lab is a whole new thing. In the lab, I feel completely incompetent, because everything is based on how well you "lab", but I clearly don't "lab" very well. Outside of it, it's more about personality, and I can engage in interesting conversations, such as tea infusions with Anna!

Walking to my lab, I walked with Chris (my new friend) and he went to the Metro while I continued on to the lab. There, I did some of my own studying at my cubicle for a while, but then my mentor showed me (and let me) perform a transfection, using annealing oligos (don't worry, there will be lots of bio jargon coming your way, but just take it all in stride) and let me watch him as he changed cell culture for the HeLa cells he is working with. I was so bad at pipetting during the transfection, he had me practice for 15 minutes (while we were waiting for the annealing to occur in the thermal cycler) with pipets and water.

Though I got quite a bit of exercise (okay okay, less than I've ever in my life, since being trapped in a building of steel and glass for almost 9 hours every day with hardly a break, and no moments to be outside or walk...and most of it is spent sitting at a cubicle), my appetite is still pretty full. I ended up eating my "lunch" at 5pm, but at least the break room was empty, so no awkwardness there, I guess. I'm okay with eating lunch by myself, especially because it's more like I choke down food so I don't pass out.

The afternoon passed by with lots of labs, me finally realizing I need to get my act together and figure out how to keep a lab notebook (I'm still pretty clueless on that...help!), but each day does bring something new, and that gives me something to look forward to each day, even if I don't practice flute like I should be, even if I can't practice tennis because that's a little difficult, even if I get home so exhausted, I have no motivation for further studying or anything using the brain. It's a miracle I've cranked out this post, but here it is, day 3 in Bethesda.


I still can't get over how beautiful Building 35 really is:

In the morning, walking into work.

Walking out of work, on the bridge.

Walking down the sidewalk, the glass is so pretty!

Leaving the NIH campus, here are the security gates.