Peddie EXP Summer 2018

This week's mostly been about statistical analysis, which was great at first until we realized that we didn't have enough rat subjects for our data to be statistically significant, which means...more scoring!!(yay) I'm not complaining, but I really would have loved to see some solid results. No one else was as disappointed, so I guess this pace at the lab is the norm. This means, however, that I probably won't be able to be there when the statistics actually end up being significant enough to establish a conclusion. Other than that, I found a really great Thai restaurant just around the corner of where I've been living, but I'm leaving on Wednesday, so I think I'm just gonna pig out every day until I actually have to leave :(

My second week’s been a bit tedious. I finished scoring behavioral videos way before my postdoc, Giulia, thought I’d be done, which she said was impressive, but also left her with almost no work for me to do. On the bright side, I’ve gotten really good at reading literature and grasping main ideas, so I don’t feel like a complete dunce anymore at meetings and journal clubs. Giulia says that once my fingerprints get processed through their system, I’ll be authorized to work on the benches, where I can actually get my hands dirty, so hopefully that happens soon. On another note, I’ve been getting more time to explore center city, and had a really great cheese steak last night, but it kind of went downhill from there, and now I’m really regretting not getting the taco salad instead.

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 contri...