Day Twelve.

Good evening to those of you in the Bay Area and really... everyone else who's reading this blog. It's been such a long day, starting from the lecture in the morning, to the lab in the afternoon which was followed by a journal club meeting and then by a movie (The Dark Knight!!!)

Lecture this morning was super challenging, mainly because there were three different lectures that we had to stay focused on. The first one, which I thought was really interesting, was about the brain. We learned all about the parts of the brain and what they're responsible for. We learned how complicated and intertwined the brain is. The second lecture was about the differences in the brains of men and women. I thought that this was very interesting because who would've thought that we really AREN'T all the same on the inside. The third lecture was on muscle tissues. This one was the hardest to focus on. I think it may have been because it was the last one. We basically talked about the structure of muscles, what they need and how they work.

I'm starting to realize that it's not the lecture itself that's hard to understand, but I really have to focus and what to understand it. It's not a matter of difficulty, but of how much I want to put into learning.

After the super long lecture and eating lunch, there was lab. Lab today was familiar because we did a gel electrophoresis on the plasmid DNA that we've been working on all this week. We've done gel electrophoresis before and therefore, it wasn't that hard. However, the results of my gel digest was dissapointing. It turns out that my mini-prep, from the day before, didn't work as well as I would have hoped. Although this was dissapointing, I learned that I should be extra careful. One tiny mistake could've caused this failure.

We went to dinner real quick and I tried to take a quick nap before going to journal club. I don't know if I've mentioned journal club before, but my journal club reads papers about the brain. The first paper we've read was about pain and our second paper, which we just finished reading, was about the effect of a certain drug on depression and stress. I really like my journal club. We have really interesting conversations and I really feel like I understand a lot of what's going on. It's been a challenge having to read these papers, these journals, but it's been good for me. I think the second paper was way easier than the first paper, which could very possibly mean that I'm getting better at comprehending.

Now... I know you're all anticipating this. After journal club, we rushed to the quad and was on our way to watch the Dark Knight! (For those of you who don't know, it's the new Batman movie that's out). The movie was awesome and I would highly recommend it to any and everyone.

That pretty much concludes my night. I'm so tired and so excited for the New York trip tomorrow! I'll be in touch.