NMSU Genomics – Day 23: Angelina’s Blog

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : my way by frank sinatra

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0:57 ━━━•──────── 3:59

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“It’s time to go to Carlsbad!” is what I wished I would’ve thought when I woke up this morning. Like an SNP being the difference between antibiotic resistant bacteria and non-resistant bacteria, one might even say, a singular event can be the difference between a broken heart and an intact heart. (Queue “Hundred Broken Hearts” by ENHYPEN) Even if we can’t go, the TAs and Mr. Steinman are plotting a bombastic and chocked full of activities Saturday for us, so I’ll trust the process. One of the things I’ve had to learn at SSP is the ability to adapt, just like our lovely Vibrio natriegens. Sacrificing breakfast in exchange for sleep has become a common practice that’s enabled by my roommate Emily, who also enjoys waking up later. Being the vampire (New Yorker) that I am, I always have an umbrella against the New Mexico rays that reach UV values over 10. And so, umbrella in hand, I walked to Foster Hall to start another day at SSP (Summer Sleeping Program). 

There’s never a dull moment in the superior lab group Fanum Taxonomy. I mean, what other group is burning a hole through their lab coat with a loop, sticking their finger into a bacterial plate, getting their hair singed off by a bunsen burner, and inhaling ethanol until it burns our eyes and lungs? Today, we spent the morning in the lab doing PCRs. Since we can’t go a day without being silly, we happened to forget which primers our group was given, but thanks to Ms. Ceilidh, we eventually figured it out. 

We all then headed down to the dungeon/lecture room to intensively work on our bioinformatics, research papers, and posters. As any good student knows, though, the brain needs breaks for efficiency’s sake. Thus, we embarked on our usual brain refreshing activities that range from practicing on monkeytype to playing Brawl Stars to watching beautiful, youthful men dance and sing. Between Vageesh’s manic mutation hunt with our glorious king Mr. Shakil’s tutelage and my side quests (much to Chloe’s dismay), our poster is looking a tad bit spacious, but fear not! Throughout heaven and earth, locked in Fanum Taxonomy alone is the honored one.

Instead of going to the dining hall, we picked up packaged lunches and headed back to the dorms. Efforts to organize dance practices for the impending talent show during lunch breaks have sadly been futile. Arion, Klara, Ryan, and I were planning to dance to “Magnetic” by ILLIT, but the Haidilao dance and “Good night, ojou-sama” by ASMRZ have been distracting us. Perhaps we’ll add it in? Writing a rap to “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar might be the move (sorry Drake fans). Our talent show is on the upcoming Monday, and I can’t wait to see what my fellow participants have cooked up the past six weeks. I’ve heard rumors of a Tequila performance and a spreading session. Dr. Duffy was singing praises about the talent show last year, so I’m fully prepared to blow him away. If all goes wrong, we can just say it was a comedy act; we’ll be entertaining for sure.

Our work throughout the rest of the day consisted of rotating through steps for our transformation using known antibiotic resistance genes and continuing to procrastinate on our research paper and poster. Well, some groups were locked in. We just didn’t happen to be one of those groups.

Mr. Steinman, per his wife’s order, bought us Papa John’s pizza for dinner to reward us for our hard work. He unfortunately laced our dinner with a physics lesson, where he discussed Gauss’s Law and other topics my bio brain can’t comprehend. It was my first time trying Papa John’s, and since I hadn’t eaten anything throughout the day, I was definitely a big back. Fanum Taxonomy is still waiting on the ice cream that Dr. Catalan promised. A while ago, during the time our chemostat was exploding every day, Dr. Catalan said he would buy us ice cream if it exploded again. Thankfully, or maybe not thankfully, it did explode. He has also mentioned getting tacos for everyone, so it seems Dr. Catalan’s wallet may soon face an economic downfall. I hope the benevolent higher ups of SSP can cover this for him.

After another day of finishing up late, I walked back to the dorms with Ritisha. We ran a bit, which is uncommon for a League of Legends player like myself, to catch up with Penichillin plus Arion, but only Klara waited for us. The others say I have a slow walking pace, but I think I’m just enjoying my surroundings. The number of skunks I’ve seen in New Mexico is probably more than the sum of skunks I’ve seen in my life prior to SSP. The  resident cockroaches also come out at night, giving us the occasional fright on our walks. Though some may say there’s not a lot to do in Las Cruces, the lack of light pollution lets you see the sky clearly. I even saw a shooting star once here. Wondering what my wish was? It’s a secret. 

I dropped off my bookbag in my dorm before heading out on a walk with Ritisha, Ryan, and Vicky. Our TAs were feeling kind, so they extended our curfew from 10:00 pm to 11:00 pm. We made a trek to Garcia Hall just a few minutes away. The vending machines in Foster are depleted of our beloved Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme, but the Garcia machines were luckily stocked up. Though I usually swear off caffeine and rely on willpower, I felt like indulging in a Starbucks Mocha bottle. 

Vicky and Ritisha were feeling sleepy, so we walked back with them before we ran into Arion. Thus, Arion, Ryan, and I took another walk. According to my health app, my lowest steps per day the past year was in December, where I averaged approximately 2,200 steps a day. Yikes, I know. Here, I’m averaging about 10,000 steps per day. SSP (Summer Steps Program) is really getting us nerds into shape. 

Once the clock struck 11:00 pm, we dashed to our rooms for the room checks, wrapping up our second to last Wednesday on July 24th, 2024. 

Side note: I ended up not sleeping at all. My willpower combined with caffeine is too powerful.

Miss Ceilidh said I could do some side quests after I blog about my day, so here I go. 

I was going to make a tierlist of the participants, but I figured that’d be unethical. Instead, I’ve decided to do superlatives. Please keep in mind this was a joint effort and many opinions were included. 

We almost never know when something will be our last. White Sands became our last field trip after Carlsbad was canceled. Our last Target run was our last Target run and maybe the cockroach you killed today was the final cockroach of your stay here, or maybe even today was the last time we’ll ever hear Dr. Duffy scold us for being late to class. I surely hope today was the last impromptu physics lesson from Mr. Steinman. Jokes aside, every moment here feels precious, and I’ll genuinely miss everyone. Thus, I’ll have no shame in being sappy. I may never have the chance to be sappy again. 

To any parents, I love your child. I love you for creating and raising my friends. Sorry if that sounded weird. To any future applicants or participants, trust the process. To any of my fellow participants, I love you. Let’s meet again one day. To any faculty that may be reading this, I love you. Thank you for everything. To any other individual reading this, how are you still here? I appreciate it, though. 

Until we meet again,

Angelina 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*