It’s Friday afternoon, and you know what that means… this girl right here has officially wrapped up her first week of classes! This semester, I’m taking some pretty intimidating science courses (Organic Chemistry and Cell Bio, I’m looking at you). But my lab advisor gave me some good advice that I’m trying to stick to: “Don’t worry about what everybody else is telling you about how difficult the class is. Make your own impressions, and realize that if a class intimidates you, it’s just going to make you want to work harder.”
With that in mind, let’s take a little walk through my classes this week. Monday morning was, Cell Bio, which at 60 people, is my first really “big” lecture course I’ve taken in my two years at Wellesley. It’s taught by some of my favorite professors, but it’s mostly juniors and seniors, meaning I have some Organic Chemistry catch-up to do during the course of the semester. Like most things, you get out of this course what you put into it, so I’ll just have to put in the practice time. And join a study (support?) group, because learning dense things is better with friends (and cookies).
Monday afternoon was my first Organic Chemistry lab, and we were thrown into the thick of things with some thin-layer chromatography. A lot of my friends are also taking Orgo this semester, and by some miracle four of us ended up in the same lab section, meaning antics like the following picture below. I was just really intent on my excel spreadsheet, okay?
Tuesday was my first day of Orgo. I was all prepared for the first day to be something along the lines of “Quick, run while you can!” but my professor is really making an effort to ease us into the water, rather than just pushing us in the deep end…which is much appreciated. I know things will pick up quickly and the course will be challenging, but I’m really going to make an effort to take advantage of all my resources: study groups, friends, office hours, and supplemental instruction (SI).
Wednesday I had Orgo again, as well as my Cell Bio lab. The first lab was mostly a review of pipetting techniques, which I do a lot of in my weevil lab. (I don’t mean to brag, but my r^2 value for my linear regression was 0.995). But we were promised a nice mixture of cool science, paper writing, experiment formulation, and new techniques, so I’m feeling pretty confident there.
Dat line so fine
Thursday was Cell Bio again, and also my first Ethnomusicology seminar. If you’re asking “what exactly is ethnomusicology?” I’m right there with you. The best way I could describe it is a class on the power of music to shape society. It was the kind of class where you come away with more questions than before. We’re also doing field projects, where we conduct our own research and interviews with people, which is totally different from any other kind of research I’ve done before and definitely pushing me out of my comfort zone. I’ll keep you updated.
Today has been pretty low-key. I had Orgo again this morning, and then I went into the weevil lab to get started on my spreadsheet. This semester’s theme is: how does locality influence genome? And my part in it is DNA extraction from weevil legs…lots of DNA extraction, eventually heading for PCRs or microsatellite cloning. Now, I’m taking some time to reflect and write to you. I can’t wait to share with you what this semester has in store!
Until next time, and ever lovely yours:
-Eleanor
