Week 9:
Freezers and the Devil’s Bathtub

July 27, 2021

This week in the lab, I continued working on my previous experiment and took care of some housekeeping around our lab. We ran into some trouble with the freezers storing all of our samples, so a few other lab members and I worked to quickly move everything to another freezer. This created a new hurdle when it came to finding those samples later in the week. Everything was a bit scattered between three different locations. This made me realize the importance of keeping the lab organized and storing everything logically. I had taken for granted that we knew where the samples were stored before the freezer broke and spent a good 20 minutes trying to locate everything I needed to run my experiment. We also prepared one of our biosafety hoods to be replaced next week. Unfortunately, we learned that our current hood hasn’t been working properly. We are not sure for how long. Well, just another item on the checklist.

On the bright side, though, we finally received a machine the lab ordered before I even began my internship with them. It has been long-awaited, and when it finally arrived this week, I helped set it up. The other lab members and I gathered around to give it a test run and play with the lab’s new “toy”.  This machine takes our well plates and washes them with the desired wash media. It was a sight to see three of us playing with a piece of lab equipment, all muttering “that’s cool” here or there. I was entertained to see that we were all so wowed and that we all have a similar interest in science and the magic technology we have the pleasure to use in our daily lives in this career. This new addition to the lab made me reflect on all the neat technology I have learned how to use here in Dr. Yuan’s laboratory, and I remembered what an amazing opportunity this has been.

With five more days in Dr. Yuan’s laboratory, I find myself thinking about all I have learned and everything I have been a part of these past few months, all the new experiences I have had. I have lived on my own in a new town, miles and miles from anything familiar. I have explored this new town, Blacksburg, and even a bit of the state of Virginia. This weekend, I went hiking at Devil’s Fork and Devil’s Bathtub. The three-hour drive from Blacksburg was, well, long but completely worth it. The hike lead me across the rocky river bed multiple times and finally to a pool at the bottom of a small waterfall with a rope swing hanging over the deep end. Further upstream was the bathtub itself. There were signs along the trail that warned about flash floods. Apparently, people have hiked in and have become stranded for a few days and nights because the water quickly rises. While there was only a small trickle this weekend, it was still a sight to see, and I met a few locals who were also quite fond of their bathtub.