Well, my summer internship has come to an end. I had my big poster presentation yesterday. To be honest, I wasn't the least bit nervous. After surviving a presentation to my entire lab (people who actually taught me everything I know and have spent much of their life studying the subject of my work), I felt like I could survive anything. Actually- even the lab presentation wasn't bad. I spent the days leading up to the presentation reviewing papers and studying up on every aspect of my project. I got a lot of great questions, and (thankfully) I was able to answer them all.

The big NIA poster day was yesterday from 12-4. Man was that rough! Spending 4 hours on your feet (in heels, mind you) giving your presentation over and over and OVER again. I was exhausted! The poster day is judged and they give out awards to the top 3 posters at the end of the day. I felt confident after my judges left. Towards the end of the day, they put out food, so I ran across the hall to grab a cupcake. Naturally when I got back, the head of the NIH wanted to discuss my presentation. Here I am which cupcake icing on my face and one of the most influential men in US science wants to talk to me- it was truly my shining moment.

Anyway, they announced the winners at 330- and I won! It was a cool moment. I guess you could say I felt a bit nervous about my lab skills going into the summer, so to win such an award was pretty amazing for me. Hopefully it will help me get into my choice PhD program! One of the greatest moments though, was running into my post-doc afterwards and seeing her reaction. She was like a proud mother. She truly taught me everything this summer and encouraged me in everything I did, so I share my award with her.

I got into the lab this morning to many congratulations and a congratulatory donut (yum)! PLUS we're having cake today in honor of all of the summer students- I will seriously need to go on a post-NIH diet after this!

Overall, I had an incredible summer. I could not have asked for a better experience. Now more than ever, I am incredibly excited about starting a PhD program next year. I cannot say enough good things about working at the NIH. I was exposed to some of the most interesting scientific research this summer and was provided ever possible opportunity to explore any and all of my interests. If I haven't already started a lab rotation next summer, I will absolutely be applying for this position again next year!

Last week was fairly heartbreaking for me...

My post-doc and I have been agonizing over IF for WEEKS! It is a pretty long process which involves growing up the cells, plating them and staining them. The staining alone is a good 3 day process. Well we've gone multiple times to view sets of cells and it has NEVER worked. Well this last time my PI watched intently as we went through the entire IF process to ensure that we were doing it correctly. I waited all week to view my cells (which I KNEW were going to look great). I walked into that room more confident than I have possibly ever been knowing that I took an incredible amount of time setting up these slides. We agonized over this for DAYS. I hand the man running the microscope my first slide. The first thing he says is, "Well it's really great staining of a raging mycoplasma infection." Mycoplasma. Bummer. Apparently a myco infection can only be seen under the confocal, so there is no way we could have known. Not only did the IF not work, but I had to throw away all of my cells. Every. Last. One. I was devastated considering that I still had 1 more experiment that I was hoping to run. Then to add insult to injury, I had to scrub out our incubator. I was not a happy scientist. Turns out the media which we used was infected. Lesson learned: when someone offers you their "unused" media, JUST SAY NO! Or refilter... if you really don't trust them, refilter twice! Oh Well, lesson learned.

On a more positive note, I met with my mentor to go over my poster and I got the big OK, so I'm good to go!

This was a bit of a frustrating week for me. My cells didn't grow as I would have liked which put me a few days behind where I'd like to be. I didn't get good results at all due to bad primers, so I used some new ones this week and seem to be getting decent but not fabulous results.

Once my cells decided to grow to confluency, I was able to treat them and continue on with my work. I isolated some RNA today (the hard way). After spending over an hour walking back and forth from the centrifuge to my lab bench and emptying countless membrane columns, I was told by one of my fellow labmates that one of the adjoining labs had recently gotten a demo machine that does all the work for you- and in less time! Bummer. Oh well, hopefully I got some good results doing in the "old-fashioned way."

I have to turn in my poster on the 27th, so I've been starting some work on that. I'm hoping to have it 85% complete by next Wednesday so that I can just drop in the remainder of my results and do a little editing here and there and be done with it!

I'm starting to get sad... I only have about 1 more week of lab work- everything else is just prepping for poster day. That makes me a little sad :(

I have been busy busy busy all week- which I like! I'm getting close to the end of the research portion on my internship, so I'm really working hard to get everything done so that I can make a good presentation come poster day. I got some great results this week, but unfortunately one of my experiments didn't work today, so I'm a little bummed to say the least. We had to order new primers which were supposed to come in yesterday- unfortunately they didn't. I ended up having to use older ones that we borrowed from someone else which turned out not to work. To make matters worse, the new ones which we ordered arrived about half an hour after I had already started. Bummer. I can't even run it again until Tuesday because the PCR machine is all booked! Oh well, such is science. We set up a bunch of cells this week which are growing pretty quickly... as cancer cells tend to do, so I have to work this weekend. I need to come in to passage my cells so that they don't overgrow and die before I even get to use them. I can't really complain though, I usually get out of the lab at a decent time every day, so losing one weekend certainly isn't going to kill me.

My First Traumatic Experience

This was a short week for me. I had a graduate fair on Tuesday which kept me out of the lab, and I had Friday off for 4th of July. I spent much of my time this week setting up for the rest of my time at NIH which pretty much involves growing up and passaging a bunch of cells. We set everything up on Monday morning, so one of the other post-docs asked me if I'd help him with some of his work since I had some free time. Since I'm a Summer Intern, I feel like I should take full advantage of every opportunity offered. Well, turns out he needed help with mice. I hate mice. Ugh, it was a horrible experience for me. Don't get me wrong, I learned a lot, and it is probably something that I might have to work with again in the future, but it definitely wasn't an experience that I enjoyed.

I went to the lab early Tuesday morning before heading down to Bethesda for the graduate fair. I had planned to go in and passage my cells, but they hadn't grown enough, so I left the lab around 10 to head down to the main campus. The graduate fair was great! I spoke with a bunch of universities which I'd be interested in attending, so all in all I'd say it was a success. I got home pretty early, so I got some reading time in which was nice.

Thursday was a pretty quiet day around the lab. Most people were on vacation. I got my work done early, so I was able to leave before 5. There was a 4th of July event in Baltimore that night which was a lot of fun.

I got up early to leave by 8am on Friday morning to head home to Virginia Beach. I ended up forgetting my ID... but I didn't realize it until an hour into my drive. I have the most amazing boyfriend in the world who actually met me and brought my ID to me so that I wouldn't have to drive all the way back. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get back on the road until about 1045- by then, traffic was gridlocked everywhere. I ended up not getting home until almost 5pm! Had an incredibly fun and relaxing weekend at the beach- just what I needed! Now I'm ready to head back to Baltimore and get back into the lab!

I Survived My First Month!

This was a pretty short week in terms of things that I needed to get done. Most of the week was spent prepping for experiments that will need to be done for the remainder of my internship. I cultured and passaged some cells and finally got to see my lines under the confocal scope! My PI warned us that the girl who operates the confocal can sometimes be a little quick to judge and tell you that your experiment didn't work. Sure enough, when we got there she told us that she saw nothing on the slides. We called someone else from our lab to come and take a look- she was able to find some nicely stained cells without much trouble at all!

I had my first journal club meeting this week. We didn't really do much except for going over how to read a scientific paper. Some of the people participating in the intern program could be as young as high school, so I understand the need to go over something like that. Unfortunately, I didn't get much out of the session since I had to read papers all through undergrad and grad school. I did print out the paper for next week though, and it seems interesting. Not in my field, but still interesting.

In other news, I finished my summer class!!! It was an amazing class, but I'm glad to not have to drive back and forth from Baltimore to DC twice a week. I had planned out my experiments on Thursday so that I could finish up early and leave by 330 to get to DC early to prep for my final presentation. At 3 pm I got stuck in the elevator at work... for an hour and a half. I was a bit panicked, but by the end of it, I saw some humor. I actually managed to leave around 430 and hit little to no traffic. The traffic gods were clearly smiling down on me that day. Dr. Kumar was nice enough to bring us dinner to as a mini celebration to the completion of our projects.

Looking forward to the short week next week! I have an NIH grad school fair on Tuesday and then I'm off on Friday for the 4th!

So I'm entering into the 3rd week of my internship, and I'm starting to burn out! I work at NIH in Baltimore, but 2 nights each week, I have to drive back to DC for a class. Granted, it is a great class... Bio 596- Drug & Technology Development- in case you're interested, but it is getting to be too much! I'd be perfectly fine if I didn't have to drive almost 2 hours when there is traffic (and there's always traffic) to get to class and then back again. On a standard Tuesday I get up early and leave for NIH around 730, work through the day, leave for American by 4, drive for almost 2 hours, sit through a class until 9 and then drive back to Baltimore. It is exhausting! Thank God the class only runs until June 25 and then I'm home free! I spent a good amount of time this weekend working on the final project for my class, studying for a quiz and researching some stuff for work. As Monday morning rolled around, I felt like a zombie. Someone was nice enough to bring in this little gem of a donut which got me through the day... well morning at least. It pretty much tasted like Christmas in my mouth. Apparently it was from The Fractured Prune which I was delighted to learn is opening a shop in Silver Spring... right up the street from my apt!