College of Wooster Biochemistry Day 13: Happy 4th of July to everyone reading!
The second Saturday of SSP was here, and we were all super excited because there were apparently a lot of fun things planned for us to celebrate Independence Day. I started my day off following my usual routine of waking up at 6 AM, laying around in bed for a couple of minutes, and going for a run.
Me and my usual running mates
Even breakfast was different today. Because our dining hall was closed, they served some muffins, croissants, and fruits at our lab building. After breakfast was our lab work. Today’s lab was on the simpler side, with us only having to recover our results from the gel electrophoresis we did yesterday and analyzing the data.
Our group’s electrophoresis results
After the lab, we had a lecture on coding in R. We learned how to use the ggplot2 package and how to plot data with it. I had coding experience before, and the R language was pretty lax on its rules, so I did not have that much trouble with the handouts associated with the lecture. After that, we went to lunch. Today’s lunch was very special because SSP bought us Chipotle! It was a nice change, as the cafeteria food is good but was getting kind of old for me.
After lunch and about 2 hours of open classroom, the professors got some board games out for us, and we started playing. I played Codenames and Yachtzee, and they were both really fun games, even though I lost in Yachtzee. I had an especially good time playing Yachtzee because it was a board game that I had been wanting to play ever since I first saw it on
YouTube a few years ago.
My board-game crews and scoreboard for Yachtzee
The next agenda after board games was a 4th of July grill that the professors and Site Director prepared for us. We had hamburgers, karaoke sessions, jackpot, and so much more. The food was amazing, and I had a lot of time singing my heart out, playing mafia, and playing jackpot and some other games with my fellow SSP participants.
What we did next was perhaps the most essential to the 4th of July celebration and spirit: we went to go see fireworks. Although we could not see much and had to walk a little bit outside of our dorms, I still got a few good pictures, and we all started singing the national anthem,
so, it was fun.
The last thing we did today was another round of mafia and poker with some scrabble letters. Although I almost lost my entire stock of letters on the first round because of stupid betting decisions, I conserved my life for a few rounds with donations and ended up winning a big round with a 3 of a kind with 10s.
After playing until our curfew, 12 AM, we all went back to our rooms and got into bed.
I fell asleep in anticipation for tomorrow because tomorrow is Sunday, and we get to go watch the Minions movie.
Today was a long day, and we already only have 3 weeks left! Stay tuned for more!
