Hi, my name is Daniel, and I am from KANSASSSSSS!!! SSP has been such a great program for me to meet kind and knowledgeable peers with the same interests as me, gain experience in the lab, and learn about different bioinformatics tools. While we’re only halfway through the course, I can undoubtedly say that this has my favorite summer program.
Typically, in the mornings, I go to the Corp 50, which is a coffee shop in the Intercultural Center, but I missed having breakfast food, so I decided to go to the dining hall. My go-to meal is a pancake with a banana, and it always hitssss. However, after lunch, my friend got me a UG love coffee from Corp, so I could stay awake during lectures.
After lectures, we had the opportunity to hear from guest speaker Dr. Frank Santoriello, who taught us about quorum sensing and his path to becoming a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton. His speech was both reassuring and inspiring and provided insight on life-changing decisions that I might encounter in the future. Overall, I enjoyed his talk and especially how he approached his presentation, creating an analogy between how bacteria make decisions just like humans. It was refreshing to see professionals show their struggles on their journey to success in the research field.
At the end of the day, we played the game We’re Not Really Strangers, which allowed everyone to open up and get to know each other better. It was nice being able to talk about how we felt and address and solve problems that developed over these past weeks.