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August 12, 2007

I'm sitting in lab.

Yes, it's 3:30 on a Sunday afternoon, and I'm sitting in lab waiting for my gel to finish running so then I can cut out the fragments and ligate them (attach them) to other fragments and hopefully once and for all finish constructing all the vectors (circular pieces of DNA) that I need. Once I'm done, I can inject fish embryos to test to see if this system works. This actually isn't my first injection; we've been doing quite a few of them recently, but the fish haven't been turning out the way they're supposed to. The basic idea is that our control fish should fluoresce green while our successful experimental fish should fluoresce red, but neither of them are fluorescing, so...I'm kinda stuck.

Oh well. Such is science: a little random and tedious, but ultimately rewarding. We're all pretty optimistic that something will work out. Optimism is key.

Anyways, gross apologies once again for the lack of updates. It's been a hectic few weeks; last weekend I had concerts for the summer school chorus and the Brahms Society Orchestra, so I no longer have three-hour rehearsals every evening. While that itself is a load off my shoulders, last week I also had to make a presentation for PRISE for our practice run on Thursday (behold its prettiness), and things have been heating up for BachSoc, the orchestra that I manage here during the year, with scheduling and recruiting and other planning. So yes, life has been quite busy.

I did steal a few moments yesterday and shopped at the Pru with a friend, though - it's tax-free weekend in MA! I didn't end up buying anything for myself, which is a bit of a bummer, but then I came back and splurged on cheap Dover mini-scores at the Harvard Book Store. And then, I went back to lab. It was 11:30pm.

That is one thing that's interesting about labs here: they're all so hardcore! In high school, I did two summer research projects, but I never - yes, never - had to go in on the weekends. Actually, no, I lie, maybe I did once or twice, but there definitely wasn't anyone else around. I'm not sure if the hardcoreness is a product of Harvard and us being Harvard kids who don't know anything but overachieving, but I feel like everyone here is always juggling lab time in the evenings and weekends, and I'm never the first to arrive nor the last to leave. I wasn't expecting to spend so much time in lab. But the fact that so many people spend so much time in lab almost makes you feel like a complete slacker even if you don't step in for five minutes on the weekend.

That said, though, I do love it here with all of our nerdy tendencies. Give me this over normal school any day. And it's not to say that we don't have fun, either - in fact, I just came from the PRISE picnic, where I stuffed myself silly with burgers and chips and cookies and other assorted junk-food goods. It was a very relaxing lunch, complete with frisbee and robot demonstrations - hey, I even have pictures to prove it!