Finally, a day to sleep in!!! Hello everyone, my name is Vicky Liu and it is my day to write a blog post for SSP. A little about today is that Wednesdays at SSP Genomics at NMSU are field trip/off days which means no class therefore no waking up early to eat breakfast and then rushing off to class. Today’s field trip was to the pool at the NMSU activities center. Additionally, it was hinted by the TAs that there may be a Target run today after dinner.
Today I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, even though I could have slept in (it was about the freedom to sleep in). You may be wondering why I got up so early. Well, it was because I wanted to wash my sheets/bedding since it is the 3rd week of my program and almost to the halfway point. Let’s just say I was glad I chose to wash my sheets at this time since when I went up to get them, all the washer and dryer were unplugged and pulled out to the middle of the room. Luckily my sheets were dry. No one knew that this was happening.
Well after this shock, at around 9:50ish my friends and I headed to breakfast. After breakfast my lab group (Shoutout to Douglas and Ritisha) and I had to head over to Foster (where class is held) to check out our plates from last night.
The plates contain the antibiotic, Erythromycin, and inoculate with our bacterias from our chemostat which we hope to be resistant to the antibiotic. When we checked out the plate we saw that there was no growth on the plates. We were supposed to collect the colonies from the plates today, but we are not able to. Afterwards we place the plates back into the incubator to see if tomorrow there will be any growth. On the good note, we were able to get our chemostat to start again since the site crashed when we were trying to restart it from pause.
After lunch, around 1:45ish everyone in the program headed over to the common room to meet for the pool. When I walked into the common room, I was shocked that Astro 2 was there too. I thought that only the genomic program was going. When we arrived at the pool, we first were given some instructions about the rules and safely before getting let go to do our own thing. At the pool, my friends and I hung out, played games, and jumped off the diving boards that were there. I have never jumped off a three meter diving board before, and it was so fun.
Pictures of my friends and I at the pool.
At dinner I sat at the table with Dr. Messner, Ryan , and Hiram. During the dinner announcement, the laundry machine issue was addressed along with other topics. The most important announcement was that we were able to make a Target run that night. I was waiting for this Target run. I had a list of items that I needed to buy at Target. The most important item was snacks, but cleaning supplies for the dorm were up there too. At Target I was wondering around getting everything that was on my list. This Target was much bigger than the Target I usually go to, so it was like wandering through the maze. When the group was about to leave, we looked outside and it was raining. Last time I went to Target, it also poured down rain. With the rain dropping on us, we all trek back to the bus stop and then eventually the dorm.
Overall today was a success and fun. I was glad that we had a day off since I needed it after all that was shoved into my brain during this program. I hope that the laundry situation gets fixed soon, but it probably won’t. Well everyone, I’m going to leave it off here, so bye!!!
– Vicky Liu
