Had a little prep work before I had to rush to go to journal club. Bronte and I scheduled to meet in the lobby of building 35 so we could walk to building 6 together. The problem with lab work is that there's wait time that can be pretty inflexible, so I was getting awfully close to the time I needed to leave the lab to eat lunch and get to journal club. I ended up ditching all food that I couldn't walk and eat with, and ran down, in time to see Bronte sitting on a couch, arriving a few minutes before our scheduled time, and we both ended up getting iced coffee with lots of milk and sugar (too much sugar, that there was a whole layer at the bottom of my drink...) to prevent any sleepiness that might arise during journal club.
Journal club was actually lively. Austin presented alone today, but the paper was about behavioral changes in mice, which was a whole lot less abstract than last week's, which was too molecular for me. This paper was easier to understand the big picture, but I am always lost during the methods and results, because I am not familiar at all with the lab techniques. However, listening to everyone talk and bounce off ideas, it was good to learn how there were flaws in the experiments and how the results could have been crosschecked by other methods but weren't, which was a failing of this paper.
On my way out, Bronte and I walked together, but I held the door for Joachim and talked a little to Jessica. I asked around for buildings, and once Joachim and Jessica found out they were both at building 10, they struck up conversation and walked away together. Yay for making friends and helping others make friends! Bronte and I work in the same building, are the same grade, and it's altogether fun having someone to walk with and someone in journal club that I can talk to. I think iced coffee, and walking to and from journal club will be a tradition...for the next 3 weeks. I can't believe how fast this summer is flying by already. I'm almost 2/3 the way done.
After journal club, I had half an hour before this workshop for high schoolers (from the local area, as well as summer interns who were high schoolers) started as an introduction to various science careers. To be honest, much of the lecture I already knew and it moved very slowly. I ddi meet a few people, but beyond that, it was not very informative, but then again, I've done some extensive self-analysis and I still don't know what path I might want to take. Maybe some shadowing/interviewing is in the near future?
Back in the lab, I performed transfection (take two) in the cell culture lab, and today was just the ultimate disaster day. I spilled two times, and one of them was the transfection mix, which obviously is the most important mixture for transfection. My mentor commented yet again on my pipetting skills (or my lack thereof) and extracted a promise from me to practice pipetting with water tomorrow. Also, I think in the cell culture lab, I have semi-converted to using my right hand. That's maybe why my hand was shaky and I spilled.
My mentor and I were in the cell culture lab for so long (I was going so slow, and even then, mistakes still happened, oh no!) that I left my building at 8. It was a long day, but there's so much to learn still. I need more practice in the cell culture room.
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