Aishwarya -- first few days

I swear Uber said I'd be there by 8:20, but I ended up getting to the lobby at 8:40 (they asked me to get there by 8:30). I freaked out for a little, but then realized that no one really cared. My postdoc, Giulia, gave me a warm welcome and introduced me to the rest of the lab. I met with my PI and three undergrads who were also fairly new to the lab. I was the only high school intern for now, but there was another one coming next week. My PI, Amelia, quizzed other lab members and me on various things about the dentate gyrus, and I wasn't the only one who was completely clueless!!! Contrary to what I thought, I wasn't going to be entering the lab-space at all, since I wasn't trained enough to work with the rodents, so I was placed at an office, and, instead of working with rats, I'd be watching videos about them (yay?). It turned out to be really interesting to score rat behaviors, and by the time I was completely invested in them and felt like I was actually contributing to the lab, Giulia called me to a Journal Club meeting. I had to read a paper for this meeting previously and had done so like I did for all the papers I read for EXP. Unfortunately, my way of reading the paper was not enough to answer the questions that were presented to me at the journal club (they picked on me a lot), but I think I didn't look like a complete dunce by the end. Fortunately, the journal club let me learn a lot about the experiment they were currently working on, and now I know how in-depth I have to read into the papers in preparation for the next Journal club :). My work hours seem to be really flexible, as long as I do some work (I have to report what I do everyday on a notebook), so I've settled on a 9:30 - 4:00 schedule, and I've figured out how to Uber on time.

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Peddie EXP Summer 2018

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