Day 2: Luncheon

On Tuesday, we finally met our mentors for the first time. My mentor's name is Kellin Krick, and he is a graduate. He grew up in Ohio which is also where he went to college. He decided that he wanted to be a biologist in his junior year in high school. When I found out my project the night before, I was very surprised and shocked, but since my mentor seems very nice and patient, I am a little more eager to start than I was before. While we ate lunch, he briefly described what my project was in more detail. Even though it is still pretty hard for me to understand, I think that I am going to be regenerating nerves. I am going to learn how to fill the nerve with the right amount of gradient so there is a balance in both sides of the nerve. We will be working on the Bio-medical campus which is about 10 minutes away from the main campus. Kellin said that he would drive me to the Bio-Medical campus. The only problem is that he is only available on Tuesdays because he has a class Wednesday afternoons. So, I will be with Seung Ha and her mentor, John-Michael, on Wednesdays helping them with her project. She is looking at cancer cells and determining the missing gene. Then, she is going to try to place that gene back into the cell so it isn't cancerous anymore. So I guess I have two projects! I think that the hardest part for me will be keeping up with Seung Ha. Since she is doing the same project both days, I will only receive half of the information that she will learn.

When we finished eating, we filled out a survey, took a picture for our Hopkins’s ID's, and then walked around the campus to find which lab each of us would be located in. I was only able to see the lab I would be in on Wednesdays with Seung Ha. It is room 138 in Maryland Hall. It is a condensed lab with multiple rooms within it. The center room is the main lab where we will be performing experiments. Some of the other rooms are only for brainstorming. There are no lab materials, only desks and chairs. The last room is where unfinished labs were kept. Once we looked around for a little bit, we finally headed back to Garrison.