Hi everyone it is Alex and this is the end of my
seventh week at The Cohen Lab! One more week to go! This week was actually
pretty exciting! It all started Monday when I went to Abramson for some more
Resse's peanut butter chips because I was running out and needed some for the
maze. I went to ask Colin how I could get some more and to my surprise he was
gone for the week! So, my grad student was not around this week which ended up
being fine because most of my research is done by myself in the other building
anyway. I also wanted to ask my PI if he would be around next week when
Dr. Crider would visit my lab so I went to his office but he was not
there. This is not surprising because he is usually really and at meetings. I
then emailed him asking him if he would be around the day Dr. Crider would be
visiting and he told me that he would unfortunately not be in the lab from
August 1st until August 9th. He will be gone my last week in the lab so I knew
that I would have to thank him for allowing me to work in his lab on
Thursday.
On Tuesday, I started the one minute time trials
for the maze and I have discovered that they a lot more work than the 30 second
and no delay timed mazes. I do not know what to do with the minute I spend
waiting for the choice trial. I want to be productive but I do not know what I
can do in one minute without being distracted. Colin told me that he listens to
talks with headphones when he ran the maze so I listened to a bunch of Ted
Talks about psychology while I waited for the choice trials. On Wednesday I did
not listen to anything because I wanted to focus on my work. The one minute
trials feel different than the other trials I have been doing because they are
a lot longer. I am researching with 6 mice and each mouse does 10 trials a day
so I am waiting for a 60 minutes or more each day. However, I do enjoy running
the maze and I am learning a lot about animal behavior and memory.
On Thursday, I thanked my PI for allowing me to
work in his lab this summer. He has never had a long-term high school student
work in his lab and he said that I did a great job! He said that he would love
to write a recommendation for me and offered me a job for next summer! Next
week is my last week in my lab and I am really excited to analyze the results
from the 8 weeks I have been working in the lab.
No comments:
Post a Comment