Day 416: Rats and chats

Hello!

Yesterday (Thursday) was quite a big day for me. I had my first calc test (it went fine enough). Then, at the lab, I extracted my first brain and sliced and did all the fun, gory stuff related to the lab's research.

NOT our actual experiment. Just samples of rat brains :P

In other news, I've been trying to run this experiment all week (with my fellow interns) and we kept f-ing it up. Yesterday, the experiment was successful (it's a two-day experiment) and today, we were able to scan our results. They were fairly successful, which is always good.

My actual boss, let's call him Dr. Z, is...interesting. I feel that I'm more of a speck on his radar than anything of actual concern. That doesn't make me any less grateful for the research opportunity. I just want to feel more...useful. And wanted. But whatever. We had a nice chat/discussion about my future at the lab and I think we're going to focus my tasks at the lab. I'm going to learn to run the experiment (it's called a Western blot) as well as I can. I'm also going to learn to troubleshoot the experiment, which seems to the be the best demonstration of my knowledge. Either way, more focused work at the lab. It can get pretty slow at times. Good thing I have books (I just finished Bernard Schlink's The Reader) and Calculus homework to keep me busy.

Tonight, lab people and I are going to dinner for my pseudo-boss, Mr. X. Mr. X is just the best. Today is his last full day. He's moving to a different lab next week. However, due to the lack of aptitude at our lab, Mr. X has decided to work part-time at our lab until August. (Yay!) Until then, we'll have to work hard to gain enough confidence and comfort with the goings-on of the lab.