7:20AM, the usual morning lineup:
Snooze my alarm and lie around ‘till the time’s too late,
check my notifications, eat breakfast, and get ready
brush my teeth,
and by then it’s like 7:58
And so I’ll hop on zoom..
Okay, I’ll stop there. That’s because this is pretty much where the same, mindless routine ends. Each new day at SSP, even on zoom, opens my eyes up more and more to the fascinating world of proteins and technology, sometimes even insane typing abilities or the geography of Turkey.
Today’s class activity block got me a little bit nervous. All groups were giving their lightning talks. I was satisfied with the slide template that our group chose and felt ready to talk about the content, but our dress rehearsal during the TA block yesterday got cut short in the middle, so we went in without too much confidence on the timing of our presentation. Not to mention, presentations are always a little scary. Fortunately, the presentation went smoothly (maybe except the part when I had to pronounce Gaeumannomyces graminis), and I tuned into the intriguing similarities and differences of other fungal pathogens.
Next up on today’s schedule was the campus block. America’s once most wanted man, Colin, gave his TA presentation. Although unfortunately, Colin’s height was not tall enough to beat Laney’s, he definitely knew his Dungeons and Dragons rules. I have never even heard of this game, but I have always loved personalizing characters when I was little, so when Colin began to talk about all the options of choosing the different strengths and between a human or an elf, I got interested. Even though the rules sounded way too complex (I don’t think I could keep track of all of them), I think I’ll maybe give it a go sometime.
Last but not the least, TA blocks. Honestly, I can’t even predict what our breakout room will look like each day because everyday is so extremely different. Some days, Alex and I argue for an hour and a half on random topics like how to eat cereal and pronunciation of words while Amari listens and laughs. On other days, we work together to plow through the research assignments or class activities with occasional stops to debate on roadblocks, and on a few days, we are all super productive, getting through the lectures and demos at our own pace.
Today was a mix of all. In the beginning, while we were organizing the plan for today, we got into a mini-debate on time zones (I’m on eastern and the other two are on central, but really not much happens on central time… right? I mean, even SSP is based on eastern). Eventually we agreed to start with our project. We were so close to finishing Week Two until we got to the last section. It asked how the assay results supported our hypothesis. We worked out the logic, but we realized that the results were the complete opposite of our idea. We sat on this problem for a long while, trying to figure out where it went wrong, before calling a TA over to troubleshoot this issue. Turns out, we just labeled the columns in the results spreadsheet wrong. Oops, sorry Colin. Sometimes our issues are dumb ones like this one but most of the time, it’s actually worthy of heavy intellectual debate, I promise. Later after we finished, we decided to independently work through our other assignments.
I cannot believe that it has already been two whole weeks into SSP. So far, other than learning a ton about biochemistry (duh) and about other SSPers to a surprising amount (yes, online!), I have also learned how to stop getting nervous when I see things that look difficult and underestimate my abilities. Science words are long and scary. When I looked at a long passage explaining the chemical processes of fancy proteins, I would panic without even reading the whole text and assume that there was no way I could understand such a thing, but eventually through SSP’s repetitive training, I realized that if I take a deep breath, slow down, and break down the text, it really is not that bad, most of the time. I am excited to continue diving deeper into SSP in the following weeks, exploring academic challenges, deepening friendships, and opening my eyes to new discoveries.
+ Quick shoutout to Noelle (my future roommate *wink*) for finishing Crash and to Salil, Akul, and Belle for starting it!!! These are very exciting milestones.
