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Cindy Wang '10 is a Fellow of the Harvard College Program for Research in Science and Engineering (PRISE) and doing research on zebrafish transgenesis in the Schier Lab.

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August 21, 2007

There's a water pump in the fish room that makes this sucking noise every few seconds that, combined with the ambient noise of the water drizzling into every fish tank, sounds a bit like someone walking through a puddle.  Which, considering the fish room is mostly water, wouldn't be that far of a stretch.  So while I'm setting up fish by myself at 10PM on a Wednesday, it makes for a very jittery experience.

The summer's almost ending - all of us PRISE folks are leaving this weekend - yet I wouldn't exactly call these few days winding down.  It's just like taking finals: the hardest weeks are concentrated towards the end.  I mean, it's not really as bad as finals; none of us are pulling all-nighters to finish papers or anything, but it's really a kick in the face when you realize that you've put your heart into a project for the past ten weeks, and you're just desperate for any sort of results.  At least that's the reason why I'm still at lab at 10PM on a Wednesday evening, and I've been here until 1AM for the past two nights.

But no, life isn't all about lab.  Part of the intensity is all the things that I've been scrambling to do with friends, doing all those activities that we'd never even think of doing during the school year.  Last Thursday was the PRISE Talent Show, organized and hosted by yours truly.  A ton of us crammed into the Leverett JCR to witness world-class performances by our fellow science nerds: music, dancing, singing, levitation, the works.  My piano quintet has been rehearsing together every Monday this summer, and at the talent show, we performed the first movement of the Dvorak Piano Quintet as the grand finale.  I hadn't played any chamber music all year, and staying on campus this summer really got me connected with some wonderful musicians, some of whom I plan on playing with next year and beyond.

This past weekend was a busy blur: Cheesecake Factory and shopping @ the Galleria on Saturday, followed by the PRISE semi-formal, then plenty of lab, Indian buffet, and kayaking on Sunday.  Last night we took advantage of college night at Fire and Ice and had ourselves a delicious time.  Tomorrow I get to present my project both for the other PRISE fellows and my lab (the latter being quite scary...eek), Thursday is the final PRISE banquet, Friday will be my last day in lab for now, and Saturday, I ship myself back home to vegetate for two entire weeks.  I'm so excited.

I'll be checking in again soon with the end of the program, and pictures of the banquet - I hear it's quite snazzy!