By Iris P.
Logging onto Zoom a few minutes before 8 AM is a routine that hasn’t changed for me for nearly half a year, so coming into SSP, I was confident that I could at least get myself out of my bed and start my laptop. What I wasn’t prepared for, was the sheer amount of brainpower I needed to digest last night’s lectures and push through the class activities and research projects. But before I could dwell on the amount of learning I accumulated over a little more than 2 and a half weeks, the Early Block had to focus our attention on the works of Jim Allison.
Although I needed to have an extra window to do quick searches of new terms and concepts, Dr. Allison’s Nobel Prize lecture was both inspiring and telling of his years of research on immunotherapy. His documentary and lecture on his work of creating anti-CTLA-4 therapies to inhibit T-cell regulation was more than enough to get me excited for his guest speaker lecture with his wife, Padmanee Sharma, next week and get some answers to my questions I still had. Hopefully, we get to see a harmonica performance live.
After a short break, we put our protocols that we formulated with our research teams to the test, comparing them with the data collected by previous years! Several tabs of lectures, previous class activities and lab notebooks later, I dove into creating Michaelis-Menton plots after calculations for velocity from absorbance and reaction times, only to face this mess of data and its chart.
Fortunately, I had little to worry, as my research teammates, Jang and Tushar, made sense of the graphs and connected them to previous concepts. Hypothesizing that the graph above was most likely caused by the failure of the enzyme to saturate, along with other errors in other protocols that called for changes in reaction time and increase in enzyme concentration, I was able to feel more confident in our own protocol our team designed the day before.
After a quick break, Campus Block had started, and with my table group, we continued the previous string of Hot Seats (thanks to Kevin for the idea!). Although the extra 30 minutes to Campus Block would mean more screen time, I actually enjoyed being with my table group and learning about participants that weren’t in my research team or in the Early Block. Memorable highlights of the “intense” questioning of Hot Seats were Ellen’s passion for boxing, Rishabh’s coin and Pokemon (scamming) business, Sai’s experiences in Iowa and with corn, Matthew’s fossil collection, and, of course, Catherine’s excellent time-keeping skills!
The second half of Campus Block was led by a classic game: 20 questions, where someone chooses an object and the rest of the group asks yes or no questions to guess the object. A couple rounds involving the air, Drake’s Hotline Bling, the Declaration of Independence, and Chick-fil-a, the first half of SSP was finished!
I spent the 3 hour break getting outside for a run (my go-to albums as of now: Kiddo by Jessie Reyez and thank u, next), catching up with work and friends, and designing the T-shirt logo for SSP. It was sad thinking that I had already passed the halfway point of the program, especially when it felt like SSP had just started, but I had learned so much, definitely more content I would remember throughout the summer and into the next school years.
Kicking off the TA block, we were presented with two choices of topics to share with the rest of the block (that were selected after careful consideration of the TA’s ideas, notably Devin’s suggestion of sharing the weirdest place we’ve gone to for the bathroom). We could either share 1) an embarrassing moment in our lives, or 2) the longest run we’ve ever had.
Embarrassing stories were presented one after the other. I found myself laughing at the pure humor and second-hand embarrassment I received from each of the stories. Notably, I enjoyed listening to Micah’s experience with fraud in school elections after promising to deliver rights to seniors, Jolyn’s persona as a makeup artist in elementary school, and Tushar’s almost-rant on his forced experience with horse culture in Kentucky. Above all, Matthew’s defecation challenges during his SAT Biology subject test, which ironically matched the failed idea Devin suggested, had us all laughing.
Leading into the work part of the TA session light-heartedly, our research team continued to work through the research project, trying to find the kinematic parameters for our enzyme, Cdc14. As we struggled and pushed through the Solver and functions of both Excel and Google Sheets, TA Block and the day was soon over.
Although I can’t shake off the lukewarm feelings about the fact that SSP will be over in about two weeks, I do know that SSP is an unforgettable experience, and I am so ready for the rest of the program. For any future applicants, SSP truly is 5-weeks that no one will regret!
