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Michelle, First Day

I arrived at Stanford around 9 am and met with my PI, Julia, and the lab manager, Anna, I will be working with. There are 3 graduate students in the lab including Anna, one postdoc, one undergrad, and obviously the PI; everyone in the lab is incredibly friendly and welcoming. The people in the Kaltschmidt lab really helped in making me feel at home. While I was a little nervous about living by myself in a foreign city, I feel comfortable asking questions and helping with projects in the lab. On my first day, I saw a mouse get euthanized and decapitated (sorta morbid). This lab is very hands on and it seems as though I will have a lot to do and a lot to learn. After learning a bit about my project in the morning, Anna and I went out for lunch at the Nexus Cafeteria on campus. After lunch, I learned some other things like how to drain the poop out of the guts of a mouse, antibody staining and how to use a confocal microscope, and went back to the apartment around 5 pm. Anna has kept me pretty busy on the first day, fortunately, and we will be jumping right in to her project with genotyping tomorrow. She said that we would be doing a lot of PCR and I would be running a lot of gels so thank you AP bio. All in all, my first day in lab was a little overwhelming, but I am very excited for the remaining two months here.

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  1. UnknownJune 16, 2018 at 8:28 AM

    Exciting to hear that you will have lots of hands on work! Don't worry about feeling overwhelmed - it is a lot to take in and learn - BUT you will assimiliate knowledge very quickly just by doing and asking lots of questions. Looking forward to your next post!

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