Today, walking up the escalator at the Medical Center, I suddenly hear "Hey Lucy!" Startled, I stop, glance around, and finally see Catherine waving to me. We walk to building 35, we manage to catch my mentor on his way to building 35, and it was fun, talking as we made the long, sweaty trek (yes today was an absolutely gorgeous, cool day, but there were hints of humidity and what can I say, it's summer and I sweat, like most other people do).
The lab meeting was interesting. Changhwan presented first, and he just talked too quietly. His first language is Korean, his English was pretty good, but he just talked way too quiet so I couldn't even hear the words. However, his presentation, from what I could garner from the powerpoint, was pretty cool, and lent itself to a lot of future directions.
Shireen was the second person and her powerpoint was a lot of data and it's slightly different from the lab focus, but it's a big undertaking and it's very intriguing. It's also incredible that she went through 33 slides in under 45 minutes...
It's Hetal's last day today, so she brought homemade cupcakes to the lab meeting. They were absolutely delicious and chocolate-y. Hetal is a to-be grad student. She went to high school in Rockford (she's from IL!!) and went to U of Iowa for as a bio major undergrad. Did a postbac at NIH for 3 years (so she's been here for a while!) and will be starting her PhD at U of MD this fall. She's been here 6 years, working in a mouse lab, and she's entertained us with a lot of stories. She knows what she's doing in the lab and she and Shireen have been doing lots and lots of crispr's these past 4 weeks. She's off to Italy tomorrow for 2 weeks, then back at NIH for the rest of her super-short rotations. I'll miss her but at least she'll be around for my last week at NIH to hopefully play some tennis!
Today there was a lot more lab work than I had been getting, and it feels good to be entrusted with bench work, but also in the cell culture. It was my first time working with the cells without my mentor supervising me and looking over my shoulder, so I was very nervous but since I've done it a few times and I printed out the protocol that I had typed up, I felt a little better.
I went to play tennis with Hetal, which was fun and I could feel myself getting better, but I have a long way to go before I'll feel truly ready for tennis tryouts. On our way down the elevator, as we were carrying our rackets, we found ourselves in the elevator with another girl, who exclaims "You play tennis? We should play some time." Keep your eyes peeled, I have a feeling that this will actually happen.
Got home relatively late, and then went shopping at Costco with Hui. We also ate dinner at 9pm at Hollywood East Cafe, which was actually this Chinese restaurant...the food was good, but the name was kinda weird.
No comments:
Post a Comment