Day 26 of SSP Cell Biology
Today was the 26th day of our program (and my second time writing this blog), and just like last time, it was certainly a jam-packed one. We worked so much in the lab, and learned much more about the experimental process as a whole. Through trial and error, we gained crucial knowledge inside the lab and understood what to do even when our results didn’t go as planned.
I woke up at 7:30 today and lay in bed for another 15 minutes before getting dressed and ready for the day. Since the lab was at 9, I left at 8:15 to get breakfast, so I was in no rush. I went to Einstein Bros and got myself a pepperoni pizza bagel before heading over to the lab.
When everyone else arrived, we began our project for the day by doing a gel electrophoresis on our plasmid DNA, which we made last night. After loading the gels, we headed to the study room while they were running and worked on our poster and other aspects of our project.
Studying until noon, we then walked to lunch at a ramen restaurant across the street (it’s amazing how much freedom we have here), where I went and ordered a bento box. It was actually pretty good, and afterwards we went and got boba before going back to the lab again.
This is where we found out that our experiment did not work. The gel was completely messed up, and we had to try again later, so we went back to the study room to work on the poster again. Surely things couldn’t go wrong again?
Walking back to the pinon (our rooming hall), we had about 15 minutes of downtime before we had to go to dinner, so I just lay in bed for the whole time.
Leaving the room, I walked to dinner where I had 3 burritos (chicken, shredded cheese, and white rice if you were wondering) and sat with new groupmates today. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much, but the new food was really good (the old dining hall was getting boring).
After dinner, we walked straight to the lab again, where we received the news that our plasmids had failed yet again. It turns out that the kit we were sent was defective, and that’s why our experiments have been messed up recently. Luckily, our professors had a new kit ready and we were able to do it right the next time.
Finishing the experiment (which may sound simple, but it was a lot of work), we headed back to the study room to wait during incubation, where we stayed until about 10 at night. Streaking the plasmids on the plate, we were finally complete with the lab and able to go home.
Walking back at about 10:30, I grabbed some water from the common area before taking a shower and going to bed. It was certainly an academic day for us today, and I’m looking forward to finishing strong in our last week!
Ethan Knapp