Week 3:
Baylor College of Medicine

June 18, 2014

Third week started with excitement. I finished my third draft for experimental proposal. The Post-doc, my lab manager, and I worked on the logistic preparation for the experiment. The Post-doc and I attach the metal plate into the jacket and weight them. We finished 16 and still missing 4. There will be 20 pigs coming. We, however, may only use 18 pigs because sometimes, there are one or two pigs that are too small.

My lab team went over every preparation steps. I helped the lab technician with making the gel and also loading samples into the wells. I have become very comfortable with making the gel and using a micro pipette to load samples. I am hoping to be able to keep practicing so that I will be well prepared for the experiment.

Seminar: MD/ PhD Chester Brown talked about the epigenetic and microbiom factors of obesity. Bottom line: common disease among human population such as obesity is less due to genetic factor but to the alternation during pregnancy or early prenatal stages.

Medical School Admission Talk
Remarks: I was deeply moved by Dr. Karen Johnson’s life philosophy because I do, too, see each individual I meet as a uniquely beautiful picture. It has been a struggle every day for the past few years to get rid of the schema in my mind whenever I meet a stranger. And I still sometimes forget to treat each person as a unique individual. But, I will keep trying and practicing. It feels so wonderful to meet someone who shares a very similar life philosophy. This reinforces what I have learned from education at Cornell in my Social Psychology class: treat each person as a unique individual and try to get rid of the pre-existing schema/ stereotype. That will enable me to see more and learn more.

Compassion, Uniqueness, Passion, Capability is essential in any graduate program/ professional program. I am trying to test my passion and perseverance and resilience for research. It is tiring. Indeed it sucks up the time that I can spend with family and friends. Yet at the end of the day, I wish I could go back to the lab and keep learning laboratory techniques and discussing ideas. And I wondered: is this “the click” I have been trying to find?

Dr. Johnson maybe right, passion is when I feel exhausted and drained off completely at the end of the work day, yet I still feel the urge and long to come back and start a new work day. In this lab, I do feel that urge and longing.

Dorm
I met and talked with Eric, a current Rice student, and a 32 years old male student- a non-traditional student (I forgot his name) in our SMART program. It is fascinating to get to know people with different interests!
The non-traditional student is interested in combining neurology and neuroscience while Eric is interested in looking at the communication between neurons. Eric is working in a lab in which he constructs computational model of neuron communication.

June 10th, 2014
I forgot to mention that yesterday MD/PhD Kjersit Aagaard mentioned one point that made me so surprise. She too, used to wonder if DNA was coiled tightly by histones, under what circumstance that DNA polymerase can come in, un-strand DNA double helix for transcription? Again, it felt amazing when I met someone who started their career a very similar question.

Today was another busy day at lab. I started out with helping the lab technician to cut chromatography paper for membrane transferring. The Post-doc came in early today. He got ready for the tissue tube to be autoclaved. I cleaned the catheter and put every two of them in a bag for autoclave.

I then help the Western Blot expert with homogenizing brain and lung tissue for Michelle’s experiment. I pipetted buffer accordingly to a chart into each tube containing the tissue and handed him. He homogenized 24 lung samples and 24 brain samples, centrifuged for 10 minute and incubated them in the cold room for 2 hours. I rearranged the tubes and helped the lab technician afterward and mix 200µL of radioactive blue buffer and 200µL of each sample, boiled them for 5 minutes and then rearrange them the order of each treatment. During the process, I made a mistake. I forgot to load buffer into 4 tubes before boiling them. Luckily, we had extra of those sample so I could do it again.

I went back to the office after that and start researching for my experiment. The Post-doc told me: the first part always the most time. Indeed, that what I learned from various courses at Cornell. Finding literature that supports my idea in a logical way is always the hardest. Indeed, I have learned in during various science courses at Cornell.

June 11th, 2014
I ran back and forth to help the lab technician with cleaning up the stations for Western Blot. I was labeling tubes for most of the day and preparing for the autoclave surgery cap, gowns, and tools. Another post-doc showed me the system that they use to make labeling a little bit easier. The post-doc who I directly work with printed the label differently than the lab used to do. So, the other post-doc got very frustrated when he showed me the system.

Anyhow, I managed to label everything by 5:00 pm. I made one mistake though: I left the test tube open overnight without covering it.

June 12th, 2014
Luckily, the tubes would not be used for mRNA extraction. The lab technician and other people said I will be fine and I just needed to cover them.

In the morning, I prepared the forms for the experiment including 20 copies of post-surgery, 20 responsibility charts. I inputted data for the tether and jacket so it will be easier to keep track. I found out that we were missing tether #10 because I was sure recorded its weight and now I could not find it anymore.

I wrapped up my day with reading more articles on intestinal absorption and writing up my introduction paragraph for my project proposal.

June 13th, 2014
I came in later today (7:45am) and started what the lab technician wanted me to do for the Western Blot. I rinsed off the primary antibody with the 5-minute wash for 3 times. After that, I made 400mL of milk with 400mL of TBST and 20g of dry milk. S6K1 was incubated with Mouse antibody (6µL- 30mL of milk, 8µL- 40mL of milk, 4µL- 20mL of milk, depending on the size of the boats of the membrane), LAT II was incubated for an hour with Goat antibody. PKB-P, SNAT 2, LC3II, 4EBP1 are all incubated with Rabbit antibody.

We had an interview workshop for medical school with Dr. Abram. He pointed at each of us to practice two to three question of the interview in front of everyone else. It was nerve-wrecking for seven of us because everyone was afraid to make mistake, and it was embarrassing for other people to see that. Yet we learned a lot from other mistakes. Dr. Abram specifically asked me to speak slower so that other people can understand everything I said, as I am not a native speaker. I also learned that the ways in which I sat and place my hand are also important. Style and poise presented my confidence and created positive first impression.
I shadowed Doctor Renan Orellana at the Critical Care Unit from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

June 14th, 2014
I went to volunteer at TCH. It was not a busy day in the ER, which was a good sign. One of the nurses explained to me that today was the first official day that all Texan schools are out for summer. So families are mostly out of town.

I sat in the ER and thought a lot about the shadowing I did yesterday at the Critical Care Unit in TCH with Dr. Ronan Orellana. I followed one of the Fellows taking her night shift. I could understand ⅔ of the conditions that the physicians were discussing. Most of them had severe problem with respiration. One of them had brain death so the physicians were talking with the family that they should let him go. I was warned that Critical Care Unit is a very sad place because most of the kids are at their terminal and the families do not care anymore because they had no hope. Indeed I did see the hopelessness in their eyes when they passed by me. For once, I saw an Asian family transporting their son out of the room; balloons were hanging around his bed. Renan said that the kid was recovering.

At the volunteer today, I looked at a young, Mexican mother with her 3 years old baby boy. She said to the receptionist with utter fear: “Yes I do not have insurance. But my boy is having high fever” The receptionist took her into the financial counter inside so I could not know what happen next. I just knew that when I ended my shift, I did not see her and I did not take her son into any room for patient.
June 14th, 2014
It was an uneventful day. I got up early and cooked for my week: some chicken and mushroom for the main dish, broccoli and carrot soup, and tofu soup. The air was pleasant that I feel like summer in Houston is treating me nicely. For me, to fall in love with a place, I have to love the people first. I think and look back, for the past 3 weeks; I have met wonderful and warm Texans. When I got lost running around Rice Village, a middle-aged African American man who was in the middle of watering his plants gave me the most earnest and detailed direction to get back to Rice University. When Euna and I went to farmer market yesterday, a female bus driver stopped a woman to ask direction for us. She took another girl who needed direction to get a MetroCard station. She was the first driver whom I have seen doing that.

At the farmer market, I got to talk to three local vendors whose smiles were the brightest I have ever seen. One man is a middle school teacher. He made jelly and jam during the summer for farmer markets. He said it worked out very nicely as he had to teach during the school year when they did not have many berries to buy anyway. An old couple sold the best olive oil and balsamic vinegar I have ever tasted! I will have to buy it before I go back home.

And the people in my lab, my lab manager, Hanh, and the lab technician, Rose, were the warmest people. Their skills, responsibility, and experience make them unique.

Slowly, and surely, I am falling in love with the Texans.