Friday
Today, I began my day walking back to Pinon at 12:30 AM after a long day of bioinformatics.
As usual, Brett, Kano, and I walked to Foster for the morning lectures. We attended lectures from Ms. Alexa, Ms. Ceilidh, Mr. Shakil, and Mr. Joey. Today’s lectures were quite interesting from the line dancing in Ms. Alexa’s lectures to Ms. Ceilidh’s hip-hop dance tutorial. We still had to finish our posters to be submitted for printing, so I spent my lunch looking over the sequences for any potential mutations.
After lunch, Dr. Duffy’s lecture horrified me for the hopeless future of antibiotics. The lecture made it seem we are all going to die due to the antibiotic resistant bacteria. However, our group felt especially relieved after a few all-day work sessions once the poster was sent to be printed. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and talking to other genomics participants.
Sunday
6 AM, me and Brettt woke up to my peaceful yet horrifying alarm. I wanted to go on a hike at least once during my stay at NMSU, so I was looking forward to this astounding experience. The first 3 hours were easy as the terrain was mostly smooth, but when we started to climb the mountain, that’s where things got really difficult. We were on all fours, desperately clinging to the few but stable boulders that ensured our safety on the rugged mountain side. The view once we reached the top was spectacular, validating the hard work and persistence of our climb.
Photos were taken courtesy of Lucas Beltran.
The worst part of the hike was yet to come. While climbing down the mountain, I slid over 20 times, nearly slide tackling Emily off the side of the cliff. The limited water in my bag ran out during the first half of the hike, so the next 2 hrs were a living nightmare, with the excessive dehydration and cramps on my body. At the end of the trip, I looked down at my shoes, worn-out and torn, rethinking my choices for this hike. However, putting aside all the dreadful experiences I faced, I consider this hike to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve done, as I persisted through and accomplished a 10 mile hike without any prior experience.
Photo taken by Dr. Messner halfway up the mountain.
