Lab rat, Part I
Ek, it's been a while now.
So much to post, and so little inclination to do so :) Where did the habit go? I think it's because I'm not using my laptop in class anymore (by which I mean the awful grueling MCAT classes from 7-9:30 pm Monday to freakin Thursdays).
ACK- I can't believe I didn't post about some other fun events dating a couple weeks ago-
Went with Kiel, his Taiwanese girlfriend (eeirely, also named Christine- but we called her KC for "Kiel's Christine") and Morgan off to Santa Cruz to cruise the boardwalk. It was great- the weather was sunny but not too hot, there weren't massive numbers of people, but just enough to make it lively. Went on some, er, rather ricketly roller coasters (nothing like the fear of kicking the proverbial bucket for entertainment purposes, right?) and played mini-golf at the Neptune area. Even got to play DDR and get some sticker pictures!
It's weird to think that those friends have almost all graduated...makes ya sort of melancholy and wistful. I hate it when you realize that things are never going to be the same, just sort of how permanent things are.
Sorry- getting introspective and wishy-washy. Bleck. Liminality and whatnot. On to more solid ground.
Our lab is chock full of undergrads (+1 high schooler) now! It's good times, albeit crowded ones. It's a good thing we've got that other lab room. Things are moving along and I'm really excited about my honors project. We're running mice on different physiological tests and getting to see some of the results for the older mice (we've been through a lot, haven't we Y17-1, 2, and 3 and Y14-1 and 2...not to mention the BD-29, -31, -32 mice!).
Worked on some genotyping on Monday and Tuesday. I got to put in an isoproterenol pump (put mouse under anesthesia, shave it, weigh it, incision, insertion and the somewhat difficult but then quite fun suturing!!) and then did some EKG probe work. It was really neat to actually do what we learned about in lab meeting. Lab is AWESOME! :) Yay!
Oh, and Rani fixed some hearts the other day, which was pretty gruesome, but still interesting. Afterwards, I had the chance to (and did) do a mouse dissection (the critter was gone anyways). You really do learn some neat anatomical stuff from it- for instance, the liver is HUGE! I mean, it was engorged because Rani had pumped saline to clean the heart (so naturally it goes through your systemic system and into the major organs) but still, there was so much of it, and it was (of course) still really reddish. The stomach is actually positioned sort of sideways, and the intestines were also configured a bit differently from the textbook image I had in my head.
Then there was boredom...Wednesday thru Friday we had to go to Santa Clara to get trained for the microarray software. The program (Genespring) itself is pretty darn cool, but the training was sooooo dull. Like, let me scoop my heart out with a spoon to end the pain dull. Plus, for some odd reason, I was stupid enough to sit right in the front row, sort of sandwiched between the presenter AND to the front right of my PI. Yes, that meant no playing solitare. I did do a lot of MCAT physics review in my head- good time to learn the Big Five for constant accceleration :) Got those down Pat. Also made some to do lists- for this week, the weekend, and long-term (i.e. own a cat/dog at some point, live in England for a while again- a long time from now though).
On Thursday night, a bunch of us Patterson lab rats got together to go to the movies too, as a sort of mini-lab outing, to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It was actually pretty good! We went to the 10:10 pm because everyone was nice enough to go at a late time since I had MCATing before that. The tickets were still mad expensive for a Thursday night (and no student discount) but the movie was sort of fun and light and we were nearly the only ones in the theater. Marissa and I just kept sort of cheering at the few scenes Adam Brody was in ("Sean" from the OC) and commenting on how pretty Brad Pitt is (he is! haha, weird, but pretty is the best word that seems to fit him!). Angelina Jolie is really gorgeous in the film too- although certain parts are enormously disproportionate :-P
Tahmina lost her keys at the end and we pretended to be secret agents whilst looking for them. I'm glad we didn't see a scary movie though- cause even with most of the lab there, I was sort of freaked out at being the only ppl the the theater. We found them in the end.
Friday, more software training. Arduous, yes. Over? Thank goodness. It'll be cool to actually process the data though.
Friday night- Natalya's belated b-day party at her place in EV! It was fun, but also slightly bizarre for yours truly, because almost everyone there was Russian! Academic KGB like :) Even my fellow Chinese friend Emily had a connection to Russia (was born there and speaks a couple lines, apparently with amazing fluency!). There was a lot of Russian said, but I couldn't tell you what- I have no clue :) Natalya had a great, mostly healthy food spread too- nice fruit arrangement! We did some (creative?) "dancing" to really really random tunes, including old Russian ones (by a scandelous who has had 5 husbands, and whose songs are old enough to have been played at Natalya's mom's 21st b-day party), Indian music, Bon Jovi, 80s music, and the Apple iPod theme song. Sonya, the officially crazy Russian friend, went slightly crazy, I think. Man, that girl can dance (and force others to, too, hehe).
Today was mostly unproductive. Woke up late. Brunch. Transferred some stuff from one lab notebook to another while watching a bootleg version of Pirates of the Carribbean. Slept some more. Ran my version of the loop and Lake Lag. Shower. Dinner. This. Some more slacking, and then hopefully some MCAT studying! It remains to be seen.
Not much else to say! G'day and hope all it well with the rest of the world- cause I'm feeling sort of Stanford Bubbly.
Week highlights:
Wed- finally getting MRI trained
Thurs- the parents and Oliver (kid brother #2) are coming to visit for the weekend!!!
:D
So much to post, and so little inclination to do so :) Where did the habit go? I think it's because I'm not using my laptop in class anymore (by which I mean the awful grueling MCAT classes from 7-9:30 pm Monday to freakin Thursdays).
ACK- I can't believe I didn't post about some other fun events dating a couple weeks ago-
Went with Kiel, his Taiwanese girlfriend (eeirely, also named Christine- but we called her KC for "Kiel's Christine") and Morgan off to Santa Cruz to cruise the boardwalk. It was great- the weather was sunny but not too hot, there weren't massive numbers of people, but just enough to make it lively. Went on some, er, rather ricketly roller coasters (nothing like the fear of kicking the proverbial bucket for entertainment purposes, right?) and played mini-golf at the Neptune area. Even got to play DDR and get some sticker pictures!
It's weird to think that those friends have almost all graduated...makes ya sort of melancholy and wistful. I hate it when you realize that things are never going to be the same, just sort of how permanent things are.
Sorry- getting introspective and wishy-washy. Bleck. Liminality and whatnot. On to more solid ground.
Our lab is chock full of undergrads (+1 high schooler) now! It's good times, albeit crowded ones. It's a good thing we've got that other lab room. Things are moving along and I'm really excited about my honors project. We're running mice on different physiological tests and getting to see some of the results for the older mice (we've been through a lot, haven't we Y17-1, 2, and 3 and Y14-1 and 2...not to mention the BD-29, -31, -32 mice!).
Worked on some genotyping on Monday and Tuesday. I got to put in an isoproterenol pump (put mouse under anesthesia, shave it, weigh it, incision, insertion and the somewhat difficult but then quite fun suturing!!) and then did some EKG probe work. It was really neat to actually do what we learned about in lab meeting. Lab is AWESOME! :) Yay!
Oh, and Rani fixed some hearts the other day, which was pretty gruesome, but still interesting. Afterwards, I had the chance to (and did) do a mouse dissection (the critter was gone anyways). You really do learn some neat anatomical stuff from it- for instance, the liver is HUGE! I mean, it was engorged because Rani had pumped saline to clean the heart (so naturally it goes through your systemic system and into the major organs) but still, there was so much of it, and it was (of course) still really reddish. The stomach is actually positioned sort of sideways, and the intestines were also configured a bit differently from the textbook image I had in my head.
Then there was boredom...Wednesday thru Friday we had to go to Santa Clara to get trained for the microarray software. The program (Genespring) itself is pretty darn cool, but the training was sooooo dull. Like, let me scoop my heart out with a spoon to end the pain dull. Plus, for some odd reason, I was stupid enough to sit right in the front row, sort of sandwiched between the presenter AND to the front right of my PI. Yes, that meant no playing solitare. I did do a lot of MCAT physics review in my head- good time to learn the Big Five for constant accceleration :) Got those down Pat. Also made some to do lists- for this week, the weekend, and long-term (i.e. own a cat/dog at some point, live in England for a while again- a long time from now though).
On Thursday night, a bunch of us Patterson lab rats got together to go to the movies too, as a sort of mini-lab outing, to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It was actually pretty good! We went to the 10:10 pm because everyone was nice enough to go at a late time since I had MCATing before that. The tickets were still mad expensive for a Thursday night (and no student discount) but the movie was sort of fun and light and we were nearly the only ones in the theater. Marissa and I just kept sort of cheering at the few scenes Adam Brody was in ("Sean" from the OC) and commenting on how pretty Brad Pitt is (he is! haha, weird, but pretty is the best word that seems to fit him!). Angelina Jolie is really gorgeous in the film too- although certain parts are enormously disproportionate :-P
Tahmina lost her keys at the end and we pretended to be secret agents whilst looking for them. I'm glad we didn't see a scary movie though- cause even with most of the lab there, I was sort of freaked out at being the only ppl the the theater. We found them in the end.
Friday, more software training. Arduous, yes. Over? Thank goodness. It'll be cool to actually process the data though.
Friday night- Natalya's belated b-day party at her place in EV! It was fun, but also slightly bizarre for yours truly, because almost everyone there was Russian! Academic KGB like :) Even my fellow Chinese friend Emily had a connection to Russia (was born there and speaks a couple lines, apparently with amazing fluency!). There was a lot of Russian said, but I couldn't tell you what- I have no clue :) Natalya had a great, mostly healthy food spread too- nice fruit arrangement! We did some (creative?) "dancing" to really really random tunes, including old Russian ones (by a scandelous who has had 5 husbands, and whose songs are old enough to have been played at Natalya's mom's 21st b-day party), Indian music, Bon Jovi, 80s music, and the Apple iPod theme song. Sonya, the officially crazy Russian friend, went slightly crazy, I think. Man, that girl can dance (and force others to, too, hehe).
Today was mostly unproductive. Woke up late. Brunch. Transferred some stuff from one lab notebook to another while watching a bootleg version of Pirates of the Carribbean. Slept some more. Ran my version of the loop and Lake Lag. Shower. Dinner. This. Some more slacking, and then hopefully some MCAT studying! It remains to be seen.
Not much else to say! G'day and hope all it well with the rest of the world- cause I'm feeling sort of Stanford Bubbly.
Week highlights:
Wed- finally getting MRI trained
Thurs- the parents and Oliver (kid brother #2) are coming to visit for the weekend!!!
:D
posted by Christine Chang at
7:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home