I woke up to a peaceful morning. Awakening to the blaring eagle screeching that I call my alarm, I walked into the echoes of hysterical laughter of my suitemates, Angelina, Ritisha, and Chloe. What were they laughing at? I stared at our toilet, overflowing with soapy water (I hope). Turns out, sleep deprived Angelina found through Reddit that the solution to our clogged toilet was a surfactant that we considered shampoo. Despite needing to resort to Miss Alexa’s and Miss Ceilidh’s bathroom for the morning, I’m glad ours at least smells of fresh, Pantene shampoo.
I continued my morning in the lab! Today’s procedure consisted of a transformation where we got to make more hopefully resistant Vibrio natriegens by making the bacteria take up the resistance gene. After hitting Dr. Duffy with the ✌ , I recently learned from him that throwing up the peace sign translates to the middle finger back in Scotland (oops). So to all the Scottish people I threw peace signs at in my life, I only mean love!!
After lab, I headed off back to Pinon Hall for my routine beauty nap. It was much needed rest for the unexpectedness of Miss Ceilidh’s and Miss Alexa’s TA talks.
Being born and raised in Texas, you would think I’d have the art of line dancing instilled in me since birth. Let me just say that is definitely not the case. Miss Alexa’s TA talk consisted of teaching us how to line dance where we learned line dancing to “Shivers” and “Cotton Eye Joe” With all its repetitive movements, I did eventually get the hang of it.
We were not done with dancing yet. Miss Ceilidh TA talk was learning a choreographed dance to the song “Yeah” by Usher, one of the best songs to jam out to I will say.
Our sweaty selves walked over to the lecture room for our guest speaker, Dr. Juliet Johnston where she talked about microbial wastewater treatment and queer science.
It was then dinner time. Over these five weeks, I eventually gravitated to these three foods: french fries, grilled chicken, and ice cream. A balanced meal I would say! I sat with Angelina, Eva, and Mr. Joey where we discussed fraternities and places we’ve been to.
We returned back to the lab after dinner to finish off our transformation experiment where Michael went crazy with the ethanol bottle and we drew a Rolex on Hugo’s lab coat.
Also spent time signing other people’s lab coats. A bittersweet moment indeed. Realizing that we officially only have 5 days left here, I am reminded of how much I won’t miss the dry heat or the cockroaches scattered across our dorms, but instead, the people I have gotten to know so well over these short five weeks.
The rest of the night was spent grinding out our posters and manuscripts. Every few minutes, it’s essential that I brain rot from the chaoticness of all this work and I somehow end up at the vending machine on the first floor of Foster. I have made so many mindless trips to the vending machine that I have discovered the perfect vending machine combo. Twix and cookies and cream Hershey bars. Thank you to the big backs, Kano and Arthur, for putting me on <3.
I walk back to the dorms with a sinking feeling. Not because I just consumed three Hershey bars, but because I have one day less to be with my closest friends.
