Keep Going💪

Sunday, November 30

152.5 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Rest (6/6)

I worked literally all day and even skipped yoga🥲 I feel a growing urgency to show data. Among my thesis applications, live-cell imaging is the most important, but I have almost no experience and little study, so I do not have good intuition yet. I will meet Bo next week who will likely be my committee chair, and he has imaging expertise, so I expect to get a lot of help.

Monday, December 1

153.3 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (1/6)

From today I am learning protein prep again from a new postdoc. I strongly felt that even within the same lab people work quite differently. I see this as a great opportunity and I am learning hard. He is Korean, which makes it easier to speak and ask very specific questions. I also realized I can use RNA as a positive control for my assay, which came up in a conversation with a Shokat lab graduate student, so I ordered my first RNA oligo. It feels like puzzle pieces are clicking into place! In the afternoon I briefly attended the CMP(Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology) year-end party. Socializing is still hard😵‍💫 I wrapped up the day without anything unusual.

Tuesday, December 2

152.6 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (2/6)

Just a usual day, working hard. The postdoc teaching protein prep is very meticulous, which helped me learn many things I had not even considered. It makes me think how much your mentor can affect your path, which can feel a bit unfair. Of course, if you work hard and build ability, it should matter less!

Wednesday, December 3

153.3 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (3/6)

Once again, the morning sky looked beautiful on my way to the gym. Last week our meeting was canceled, so after today’s lab meeting I told Bill I would like to try a different approach while we wait for the incubator. He readily agreed! I kept learning the experiments, organized the reagents I ordered, and ended the day. There is nothing special lately, but I need to summarize progress regularly and I am behind. I will organize it well when I upload my progress report.

Thursday, December 4

154.1 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (4/6)

I do not understand why, but protein prep failed again!? The postdoc also does not know the reason, so we decided to order a gene fragment and go back to the very beginning, suspecting the glycerol stock might be wrong or different. I hope the next round works. I ordered a new vector from Addgene, the one used in the Baker paper, and the remaining reagents I need. I also did computational work on a different aspect. I did a quick 5K run in the evening and finished the day.

Friday, December 5

153.8 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (5/6)

In the morning I met Bo Huang for the first time as a committee member. He was very kind and spent almost two hours listening to my presentation and advising me on how to prepare for the qualifying exam. The most important takeaway for me was that very difficult and unprepared questions will come anyway, so by studying hard and thinking deeply about my project, I must be able to organize my logic and thoughts in response to any kind of question. He also kindly agreed to serve as committee chair, which I was very grateful for. Following his suggestion I emailed the rest of the committee to schedule the date, and I feel I will get it soon. After the RIPS talk, I had lunch with my cohort and focused on understanding the logic of the SAPP protocol using the LM0670 vector and the custom scripts on GitHub. They are very helpful for streamlining IDT gene orders. I really like it.

Saturday, December 6

153.1 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (6/6)

We finished a refreshing morning run, then went to Early To Rise, Scratch Made Brunch even though it is a bit far. It was good, maybe 7 out of 10…? Eggs Benedict tastes great almost everywhere. Afterward, we spent several hours studying at the library. Across the street there is a strange but nicely decorated department store-like place that always seems closed on weekends. I took photos of their Christmas decorations. In Korea, a place like that in such a location would definitely be packed (I eventually learned next week that it has been in legal dispute over redevelopment and reopening since 2018). In the evening I stopped by Costco to buy pears for making pear ice cream and picked up some new foods to try, like string cheese, extra lean ham, and pre-cooked sirloin, mostly items with good reviews. I wanted to finish all the experimental prep by tomorrow, so I did a bit more computational work and went to bed a little late. I hope to start the experiment soon.