Midterm Report

HHMI Summer program is beginning to sap some of my life energy out of me. The most difficult aspect of the program has been finding a way to balance the events in the lab with the events of the program itself such as the classroom sessions. These sessions are quite interesting though but then the lab itself is interesting to. Building upon this as well, my mentor also has a few events come up now and again and then I have additional stuff with VCU that pops up too (for example like giving a campus tour because someone took my Saturday one or having to do a transcript request). But all in all I have been able to manage it.

Progress has been made nonetheless. I have managed to continue to conduct and perform several assays. We have been able to calculate the protein concentration within our plasma membranes and microsomes by doing a simple biorad analysis on the plate counter (which works by using light to analyze the content). We have also been able to conduct several uptake assays with the membranes and microsomes and seeing how they are affected by the addition of inhibitors in the presence of the radioactive aflatoxin. We are able to get numbers from this by simply using a machine that is able to count the radiation that is given off by the substances (a scintillation reader).

I have also continued to go on my quest of finding a major. I know that I have said that I am a Bioinformatics major, but I just don't feel any excitement from it. It is a nice and promising major but it doesn't seem like it will be all that thrilling to do for the rest of my life. I could manage doing it and all but when the cover is removed I want to really do something else. I almost want to do something non science even. In the sciences I can possibly see myself as a Paleontologist or people who study early Earth formation and such, that seems thrilling. I can also see myself as a museum curator or something, nothing too heavy in history though but more like science history. Right now I just don't know what I want. Ultimately though, I would not mind being one of the scientists, like the ones from Jurassic Park, who work to bring back dinosaurs from amber and such. I go to meet with my adviser to discuss additional things to do with my path. Right now I am leaning toward a double major in Bioinformatics and Clinical Laboratory Sciences, which seems to be something else that is interesting, I might get to work with pathogens and microbes (exciting).

Basically that is what has been going on for about the past few weeks of my silence. So hopefully I will have a bit much more to talk about.