The First Two Weeks Are Complicated, Even on the Sunny Shores of San Diego
As the sixth EXP student to intern under Dr. Ballatore, I have never felt more welcome when introduced to a new working environment. On the first day, I was in awe of the campus. The buildings were/are huge, the university is verdant as ever, and the student population is quite noticeable. This may be because I showed up at 9:30 AM on the first day. Similar to Peddie's campus life, it is quite lively later in the day rather than in the morning. After entering what I thought was the lobby of the daunting Skaggs School of Pharmacy, Ms. Cremonese, my PI's HR, came herself to greet me. After taking an elevator to the first floor, she made me go through a short process of regulations and requirements that are necessary for obtaining the right to work in a laboratory setting. Soon, I took the elevator back to the main floor and met with Dr. Ballatore. He decided to take me on a tour of the campus: where I would eat, where individual buildings are, and where I would have my UCSD card made. During our lengthy (36 minutes) walk, Dr. Ballatore described to me what I will be doing in the laboratory, and why I am not allowed into the actual laboratory. The issue is that in the laboratory, there are two substances locked up in a small cabinet. These substances can be used to make illegal drugs, so even if they were locked up and out of my reach, I was not allowed in the lab. We both went to the card station, and after having my picture taken, we both went back to the Skaggs School of Pharmacy to go up to the third floor and get introduced to my surroundings. He showed me his personal office, as well as the shared office. I was to work in the shared office, as I was not allowed into the actual laboratory. My task for the first day was to get to know a specific electronic notebook that the graduate students in his lab use on a daily basis. The journal was simple enough to understand, so after learning the ins and outs, I started to write this blog post. Soon, Dr. Ballatore introduced me to Dr. Abagyan, my other professor in my lab. They both decided my schedule right then and there. I will be entering the workplace at 8:30 AM. I will be learning how to code in the icm computer language from 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM. From 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, I will be working. I can’t wait to start this Chem lab!
On my second day here, after the lesson with Dr. Abagyan, I went to Dr. Abagyan’s group meeting with his grad students. There were eight students, and they presented their research work to the group. I was fascinated with their different fields of research, and how much progress each person made. Although after two hours into the meeting, my stomach was growling like a beast, and I pretty much zoned out. 30 minutes later, I went back down to the third floor and went to the Ballatore lab. There, I was introduced to Dr. Ballatore’s post-grad students. I will be working with Alessia, the person who makes the substances that I have to find the solubility for, and another who has been working with Dr. Ballatore ever since he moved here from UPENN. I asked them what I will actually be doing, and they said that I will be working on dilutions. I was not allowed in the lab, so I was diluting the substances in my office. Using the power of DMSO, Alessia’s calculations, and a pipette, I diluted a few substances. Chemistry Honors was working wonders! Anyway, I loaded the substances in the HPLC and waited a few hours for the results to come back. I was really confident in my pipetting skills. I knew that I set the correct substances in the accurate vials, and then into the proper trays. I knew that I was going to impress everyone in the lab. “The new kid was able to find the results on the second day? Surprising.” I couldn’t wait. I went to lunch. When I came back, Alessia was waiting for me in the office. Well, she was eating salad (It was here lunch). I sat down next to the computer. After five minutes of silence, I asked her how my experiment went. After swallowing the lettuce, she finally said, “Yeah, the results are flawed. There was no detection whatsoever.”
…There goes first impressions. I soon asked why and she said that it was weird. It wasn’t very often a substance couldn’t be seen on the HPLC. Great. I will now be working with her on dilution, just to make sure I am doing everything right. Even better. Soon, I met the graduate student I will be working with. His name is Jac Lorenzo, and he will not be available until the third week, as it is UCSD’s exam season. Outstanding. In the end, I went home, disappointed with the work I did today. Well, tomorrow is always another day. Who knows what will happen!
Not much. The third day started off with another icm lesson with Dr. Abagyan and soon transitioned into me working with Alessia on dilution. While she was doing the dilutions, I was her partner in crime, vortexing the vials every time she was done with them. We both went into the lab and put the samples in the HPLC. Oh, also, I was going into lab 24/7 at this point. Nobody seemed to mind…so…shh! Anyway, after setting up the samples, both Alessia and I went to lunch. When we came back, the samples were done. We looked at the results and…I kid you not…they were inconclusive! I know that this is not a good thing, but it was a chance to redeem myself. Alessia said that maybe the sample itself was weird. I gladly nodded yes. Soon enough, I entered the office and saw Jac sitting with a group of solutions. He told me that he was free for today, and was going to observe me dilute substances. I diluted the substances with him, and like a pro team of tennis players, we ran the contents in the HPLC. Triumphantly, I marched home, as I only live five minutes away from the campus.
The next day, after Dr. Abagyan’s lesson, we found out the results of the dilutions from yesterday. Turns out everything worked like a charm! Soon enough, I was making calibration graphs of the samples. This was my routine for both Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday (Tuesday hosted another group meeting with Dr. Abagyan). Then, a change occurred. An amendment that would move the very core of what I was doing daily in the laboratory. Read on to find out.
Nice video, right? Anyway, Alessia introduced me to a new $90,000 machine. I call it the Turbidity machine, as it can measure the turbidity of samples. It has other functions such as measuring Pka and pH, but I have not yet learned those functions of the machine. After creating new dilutions (with new calculations (yay!)), I pipetted the samples into stirring vials, continued the dilution with a 7.2 pH buffer, and stirred the samples with a magnetic stir for 2 hours. I then measured the turbidity values as percentages for these samples and recorded the results on the electronic notebook. This was to find the kinetic solubility of the sample. I don’t want to get into much detail, but to detect if a substance is soluble, it must be kinetically, intrinsically, and thermodynamically soluble. The HPLC was used to test intrinsic solubility. The thermodynamic solubility you ask? Oh, that is a story for another week. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were three days I solely collected intrinsic and kinetic data. Finally, the first third of the entire lab experience was over. I enjoyed it very much, and happily Ubered home. My family and I went to the UTC mall nearby that weekend. The mall was huge and magnificent.
These first two weeks were quite marvelous. I can’t wait to continue to talk about my next week, especially since Jac is coming back next week.
Therefore, the blog is to be Continued…
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