POST 1: Job Shadow Day: January 6th
I arrived at my internship at around 8:15 and i left at around 2:20. My mentor taught me about cells and about atoms. Also i got to sit in on two conferences and they were discussing projects that they have been working on. My mentor is Elena and i am working in a lab at UCSF in Genentech hall.
Post 2: January 20th
On my first official day in UCSF i learned about DNA and the bonds that connect them together. Also i learned how to clone cells and how to take pictures of them. I went to two conferences. One was about what everyone did throughout the week and the other one was a presentation of someones work. I think i impressed my mentor because i knew some of the stuff she was talking about but i need to work on some of the things because I'm still learning everything. We had some down time because we don't really do anything before the first conference but in that time my mentor taught me about DNA.
POST 7:First blog in heck of long
I read Jose, Madilyn, Nick, Karen, and Jordans blogs. I think that Joses writing is the best so far because his is interesting and the pictures make it funny and more fun to read. I dont know how to put pictures on here so i guess i cant do that but i can write like how he does and it will sound a lot better. It doesnt seem like a lot of people are blogging. I will help karen start blogging because she just recently got an internship and will be able to blog something interensting. i think that i am learning about the same as other people because we are all learning about different things so theres not really anyone learning more than other people. I think that my WLE is still interesting because i feel like i understand most of what is going on and it makes me feel smart. I made solutions with the pipets all by myself this time and it was cool because i didnt need any help and it was done on my own.
Post 8: Sick day
I work in a large business. The business is broken into different labs and each lab has a least 15 people in them. its cool working in this size of business because you can see all the different projects that other people are doing. My mentors name is Elena and i report to her and follow her around. The person that is in charge of the whole lab is named Dyche. In the 10:30 meetings at the lab people present what they did that week and Dyche takes down notes and tries to understand what they could do next time or do better. My work place is professional because its a science lab. the only thing i dislike about working in a professional environment is that everyone has a lot more years of experience and knowledge that i don't have so its hard to understand a lot of things. But i like how everyone knows exactly what they are talking about and how they help each other out and give each other ideas. I don't really think it matters if you get a degree in life as long as you end up doing something that you love to do then thats all that really matters. I spent most of the day resting and sleeping so that i could feel better. i didn't go to my WLE because i was feeling sick once i woke up.
Post 9: Relax Day
Today i didnt do much becauce my mentor elena was preparing for her talk at 1:30. She had to present a powerpoint presentation to show to the other people working in the lab. her presentation was really good and had really cool pictures of her Arp2/3 complex. but for me i just pretty much relaxed the whole day and filled up a couple test tube like things with Cip (which is something that helps cut DNA). I think that my WLE project will be the one that i have been working on since i started working at my internship because its realy interesting and we will finish around the time i have to present so it all works out.
Post 10: Another sort of relax day
i have a total of 42 hours and 50 minutes so far at my internship. this means that i am behind. i am behind because not only did i miss two days but i haven't been able to stay for the full 7 hours because i have another job on wed so i have to leave early. i will make up hours on spring break so that i will be able to have 100 hours. today i went in to the lab and elena was teaching me about buffers and how water is not a buffer. a buffer is something that keeps the ph level of something stable so that it wont change much when you add another substance to it. she showed me this by filling up to beakers filled with a substance with a ph of 7 and droping buffer into one and water into another one. then she poured something that was very acidic and measured the ph of both of the solutions. the one with the water changed its ph by a lot so thats why water is not a good buffer. after we did this we went to the group meeting and everyone explained hat they did that week and i explained about the buffers. After that we left and elena had to go to the store to buy food for the next meeting and i got to stay in the lab and read and watch the gels so that the DNA doesn't fall out of the bottom of them. Once she came back we went to the Lab meeting and we learned about this one lady's research that she was doing for her whole time in the lab. After that i had to leave so i wouldn't be late for my other job. For exhibition i am going to present what i have been doing which is trying to find a better color to see DNA with.
Post: 11 Mentor Interview
For this weeks blog i was supposed to interview my mentor over the phone. unfortunately it is a little late to call my mentor and the blog is due tomorrow so i don't want to call at such a late time of night. i'm not exactly sure what i can do for this blog so ill just tell you how i have been doing at my internship so far. i feel like i have learned a lot more about my project and why it is so important that we find better fluorophores for the DNA because i've noticed how in some of the presentations that i have seen, a lot of the people say something about how something is moving in their picture but it gets photo-bleached and they cannot tell what happens to their speckle that they see in their picture. if we make a better fluorophore then it will be a lot better for scientists to get better results and more clear data for their experiments.
Post 12: How my WLE project is going
this week i looked at DNA codes on the computer
i had to make sure that the codes were similar to each-other so that they will be able to work with one other. i did this pretty much the whole day. on exhibition night i plan to present where i work and what i have been doing there, i plan to show everyone that ive been working hard in my internship. im not really sure the steps i am going to make to finish my wle project. im still behind in my hours. i went in three times over spring break and changed my work schedule for my other job so i can work the full day. also i will try to work on weekends if i have the time.
Post 14 Almost Done
With only one more week left I haven't really thought of what I was going to do to thank my mentor. I know she likes flowers so I will give her flowers on my last day. For the potluck on exhibition night I could bring BBQ chicken. At internship today I did ligation of DNA. What this means is connecting two strands from a single strand of DNA together with an enzyme called DNA ligase. For my WLE project I will explain how the DNA ligase enzyme works and why it is important to the project I have been working on. To finish my WLE project I need to do a lot. We are still collecting data which will be finished by next week and I need to make an outline for my presentation. So for my benchmarks include, organizing and charting all the data. make illustrations and explain the DNA process and how florophore helps scientist, I figured out by going in early next week and staying late I will have all my intership hours.
Post 15: My last day at WLE
Today we finally got to see our flourophores in action under the microscope. We took movies of the florophores and saw how long they took for them to photo bleach. This was a long process because i would have to find a cell and take a movie of it. i had to take 15 movies on each florophores so in all i took 90 movies because we did each florophore twice. once we finished that we went downstairs to eat lunch. then we went back upstairs and we transfered the movies to her computer were we were able to get more data on the pictures of the cells. My mentor bought me lunch for the day and i brought her flowers and chocolate. Also im pretty sure i have all of my hours that i needed to get.
