Today was the start of the second calendar week of SSP 2021 (we started on a Thursday, so it’s technically midway through the second week). I logged into the Class Activity block at 8am EDT. It’s always funny to see everyone in the morning, since everyone looks super tired and sleepy. Before starting our class activities (that’s right, we had 2), Dr. Das talked a little bit to us about what we will be doing. We were then split into breakout rooms according to our project teams.
The first class activity was about applying our knowledge about ion exchange and gel filtration chromatography to protein purification. Our team (the East Coasters!) worked through it pretty smoothly and by the time Dr. Das came to check on us, we were already on the second class activity. This one was about finding primary literature on PubMed and Google Scholar and gave us a little tutorial on how to use the search functions to get the best results. Then, we had to find at least 12 articles on our own target protein family. It was just a lot of searching and reading …
Heading into Campus Block here, we played some sort of concentration game, but we also had to keep track of who had what hobby. Pretty confusing at first, but everyone had a lot of fun in the end! And at the end of the day, the East Coasters finished up our homology model for our protein, watched the protein purification video from the TAs, and watched some lectures on electrophoresis.
It was another fun and productive day at SSP. For me, I love SSP for a number of reasons. First, I just get to learn so many things. Even though I had a good base of knowledge before, SSP has taught me more advanced and in-depth material than ever before. Also, the peers at SSP are just amazing. It’s very easy to work with everyone and we all have fun while collaborating. SSP also provides us with opportunities to meet new people with similar interests, which I’m truly grateful for. As always, I’m looking forward to the next day!
