Purdue Biochemistry Day 15: Purdue Vlog July 14th
Hello! Welcome to my vlog day! I’m Isabella, and I’m so happy to be sharing an honest day in my life at the Purdue Biochemistry program.
I woke up at 7:30am (I love sleeping) and slowly made my way to the lab at 8am for a morning lab session. Despite being slightly dejected that my group would have to run our enzyme assay for the third time, I spent a lovely two hours trouble shooting our lab from the day before. I gained a lot of experience pipetting microliter volumes into wells as well as working with Excel and Desmos to calculate rates of reaction and product concentrations.
A portion of my lovely Excel spreadsheet
My group from left to right: Myself, Chris, Aiganym
Following our busy time in the lab, we headed off to morning lecture where we learned about Enzyme and Molecular Regulation. I may have spotted a few of my friends dozing off, but in my opinion, enzyme regulation is pretty interesting. I took some notes on the different types of enzyme mechanisms such as acid-base catalysis, covalent catalysis, and metal ion catalysis. We had a lot of fun following the arrows from nucleophiles (electron donors) to electrophiles (electron acceptors) in various diagrams.
For lunch, my friends and I headed off to Starbucks for a performative lavender latte which happened to match my skirt. We enjoyed a few juicy burgers and fries.
After lunch, we had our third Belonging series lecture where we learned about different types of soft skills and gave examples of how we could develop these skills during our time at SSP. Our final lecture of the day was about Methods and Figures. With our final reports impending, we really appreciated receiving some guidance on how to write our methods section effectively, and how to organize our figures so as not to overwhelm our viewer/reader.
I spent most of the afternoon working on some assignments, mainly finishing up some calculations (with some *minor* issues). After learning all about having a growth mindset the other day from our second Belonging series lecture, I decided to approach every equation with a positive mindset, knowing each calculation would bring me closer to the end of the assignment! My drawings on the whiteboard depict my feelings with unparalleled accuracy.
We had dinner in the dining hall—stir fry, pizza, and ice cream. Earhart dining hall has a variety of options within each station, so I decided to try something new! With a stunning recommendation from my friend Margina, I decided to request a singular banana pepper on my pizza this evening. One of my more embarrassing moments at SSP, but it goes to there is no lasting harm in putting yourself out there.
We headed back to CHAS for an evening work session where we were treated to a stunning performance of Twinkle Twinkle by TA Robby on an otamatone.
In all seriousness, I am so grateful to have met a wonderful group of friends (and musicians!) at SSP. They are so supportive throughout every moment—whether it’s celebrating the success of our labs or enduring secondhand embarrassment from my pizza guy encounter. To finish off the day, we crammed ourselves into a practice room for a Czardas jam session. Shoutout to my piano accompanists Johnathan and Luke, and my moral support accompanists Shirley, Sky, Amanda, Margina, and Johnny!
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Isabella D.
