Summer Reflection 1:
I am very thankful that – after coming out of a strange
spring quarter – I finally feel like I am regaining confidence as a student and
as a developing scientist. My summer mentor Sky (a post-doc) is super invested
in seeing that I learn all the underlying lessons of my summer project. I am
also proud to say that I have shown initiative in troubleshooting components of
my experiments, by producing positive results despite the setbacks. That being
said, Sky is very receptive to my questions, checks-in on me frequently, and he
has said he is impressed with the progress I have made on a project which he
called ‘ambitious’ from the start. I haven’t had many chances to interact with
my PI – Dr. Denise Monack – but now that my project is well underway, I think
we’ll have more to talk about moving forward.
This is the house I’m living in while at the Farm:
It has been very insightful to live in a house with students
from many different parts of the country, each with their own particular
viewpoints and cultures. I even started learning Farsi from some good friends
that I have really connected with since being here. The summer programming has
also been fantastic! We have a coding class every Friday afternoon too, that
I’m really taking advantage of to learn Python and R for my future classes.
Something that I have been itching to do is attend a thesis
defense (after Eddie Polanco told me about going to one at Albert Einstein). I
ran into this announcement today (7/7/2016) while walking down the hall of our
lab building:
CRISPR/Cas9 is huge around here! The Monack lab also uses
CRISPR to remove genes from murine, bone marrow-derived macrophages. I might
get a chance to try this technique when I start working with another post-doc
(Marta) next week. In any case, I’m going to schedule time to go to this
defense. I’m looking forward to it!
Overall, the summer program at Stanford has been a blast
thus far! If things continue going this well, I can easily say that I’ll be
returning to UCLA with a newly reformed confidence that has been long overdue
in my books.
I’d also like to send my warmest regards to Dr. Long, Dr.
Jones, Alfredo, Dr. Quinones, and Dr. Goins back in Los Angeles.
Sincerely,
Fernando
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