Author | Leon Z.
Editor | Rex S.
Ah, it’s the weekend! After a long week of hard work, I finally get to enjoy some quality downtime with my fellow SSPers, sleep in, and simply enjoy their compan-
What? 8:30 lab again? Are you kidding me?
Anyways, I woke up at 8:00, as groggy as ever, as I went to sleep at 12:30 yesterday (a fantastic improvement from the 1:15 I usually go to sleep to). I said hi to my roommate, fellow SSPer Jacob, and prepared myself for the day. I debated going to an actual dining hall and spending my precious, precious meal swipes on some breakfast, but I ultimately decided to go to the first-floor kitchenette in our dorm and eat some cereal.
Unfortunately, I discovered we were out of milk (I refuse to eat cereal with water, unlike certain other participants in this program) and so I decided to settle for a extremely healthy and totally justifiable breakfast of chocolate pie and SunnyD (it’s basically orange juice).
Lab today was a makeup-day, for people to redo experiments or finish things up. I met up with my groupmates Maria (listens to Death Grips and Bladee) and Brian (Brian) in order to do two things: take a picture of our gel showing our purified protein and set up a basic activity assay to test if our protein had activity. Both procedures were pretty simple, so we were out of the lab within an hour (and both procedures went pretty well too).
After we finished our lab, we didn’t really have anything to do for the next few hours, so everyone on my floor gathered to play video games and listen to Drake. For the most part, people either played Minecraft (there’s a communal IU Biochem Minecraft realm) or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. CS:GO got a little heated, but everything was settled peacefully and calmly. I personally played some Bloons Tower Defense 6 and then hopped on the Minecraft realm.
Then, at 2:30, it was time for the pool! The entire IU Biochem crew strolled on down to the local community pool, where we ran into our fellow SSPers from Genomics and had some fun in the sun. Some people suntanned, but most people went into the pool. I rode a few slides, jumped off the diving board a few times, and also played some water football (we didn’t have a football, so we used a flip flop instead). After football, I was a little tired, so I tried to relax, but SSPers Xinrui and Monica rudely tried to splash water on me (you guys suck). They kept being mean to me on the way home too — they said my bucket hat made me look like a farmer, and then tried to knock it off my head.
After the Pool, we went to dinner, where my table had some truly elaborate discussions concerning fast-food (Raising Cane’s or Popeyes? Portillo’s? Why do they blend cake into a milkshake and sell that?) and raising eyebrows (why can people raise only their left or right eyebrows? Us SSPers are starting an auxiliary research project on this subject soon).
After dinner, we went to have some ‘Mandatory Fun’ at IU’s bowling and billiards area with our fellow SSPers from Genomics. I played some ping-pong, watched some of my friends be really, really bad at bowling (not naming any names but…they know who they are), watched Lab Assistant Nick be really, really good at bowling (apparently this is what he does for fun), and played some pool. I had a lot of fun, and it certainly was a well-spent 2 hours.
After we finished bowling and playing pool, we returned back to our dorm, Goodbody Hall. My friends took this opportunity to continue to play even more games, like Valorant (CS is better), Minecraft, or League of Legends (we seriously need to stage an intervention for Daniel, his League addiction is starting to get concerning). Instead of wasting my precious time on video games, I’m writing this, and also enjoying some surprise ice cream that we got. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, especially because I can sleep in until whenever I want.
Signing off,
Leon
