Saturday, August 27, 2011

Week 9 Post 2 -PK

Lahh only 3 more days!~ I'm so excited yet sad. I'm excited because I'm almost done with all of my trials. I'm sad because, well I'm almost done working in Shaevitz's lab. Hahahaaa I mixed feelings seem very weird when explaining them.

So everything I've done up till now essentially was just gathering data. I haven't had any time to analyze it really. I did a little bit in July I think, but while I'm in school. I have to do that. So I still have yet to download the software for analyzing and plotting the data. That always seems like it's a problem huh? The truth is I'm technically not supposed to get ANY software since all of it belongs to Princeton and I'm not a student. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am a "visitor". If I didn't make it clear in my other post, I'm very sad. I get the same status of a 1-day visitor despite working in a lab for 10 weeks, walking in and out of signs that say "restricted access" (or something like that), and walking through doors that require a swipe of a key card! Plus, when I buy food from the campus center, I get charged tax :'(
So coming back from my digression, I will be getting the program I use for analyzing the data on Monday. On  Tuesday, I learn how to use it. On Wednesday, I use it a bit and ask Teuta a lot of questions. Then for the next month, I'm supposed to plot, analyze, and interpret the data all by myself. Hopefully I'll be able to come to the lab during some days in September to get help, but the vast majority of it is going to be done by myself. Truthfully, this is going to be a huge challenge for me. One because I don't know statistics very well. Two, I don't know biology very well, so I may not have the best interpretations. Three, essentially I have to teach myself this program. Four, I have a bunch of other stuff going on in September that I'm supposed to do.

But so far, I think I'm going to be getting enough data to be meaningful. Data is data, but meaningful data is better. We'll see. Only 3 days left and nothing major broken. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but we'll see.

Oh and apparently someone in the lab is working with Cholera so now whenever he's in the lab, I have to wear a lab coat. No one else does... just me :(

Peace~

-PK

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