Between getting lost on the beautiful yet painfully baffling campus too many times and the humid heat making all of us feel like a denatured enzyme, SSP has truly commenced. To me, the first two days of it felt like a chance to start over, and making this many friends felt like unlocking the characters of a new game.
Nevertheless, in a more objective sense that I as a non-gamer can speak from, it has been a very sciency three days. I jumped when the bunsen burner lit up and a nearly invisible blue beam of flames flickered. In my defense, I’ve never seen a bunsen burner because online Honors Chemistry robbed me of that experience. TA Emma commented “that’s one good buffer” on our HEPES buffer when it made the decision to refuse to reach a pH of 7.5 as I allowed each prudent drop of 6N NaOH in my pipette to fall in. Made me proud :>
I’m not about to call the first three days “easing into it,” because it’s not the same when you work on some chemistry problems you thought you knew but clearly don’t. Nor am I talking about the field trip to downtown Bloomington that may have just gotten me burnt out (quite literally, I was deprived of H2O).
But some things you can only see from a smiley face pattern of 70% ethanol on my research group’s eventful lab table.
Hey! I’m Frances and Beijing and Washington DC are my homes. I’m way more bio than chem, but I find biochemistry insanely interesting. I also enjoy playing the piano, listening to music, and writing in my free time. Something cool I occasionally brag about is having memorized the location of every country on the world map!
