IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN:
“We're leaving together, But still it's farewell” Those lyrics are a perfect description of what is happening this week. It is time to leave Charleston, Oregon and even though, most of the interns are leaving on the same flight and at the same time it’s transient. We are leaving each other at some point and the reoccurring thoughts that our lives may never cross paths again are ringing in my head. I plan on trying to keep these amazing friendships but sometimes life has a way of throwing curveballs where you lose the connections you made or what I subjectively think may be worse just drifting apart. There is no exact reason as to why you stopped talking it just happened and you can always try to repair that but the uncertainty of it is slightly haunting. Anyways, enough with the mushy feelings! This week consisted of the poster symposium, a farewell dinner, multiple potlucks and a couple of flights to go back home. Let’s start with the poster symposium! Wow feelings were running high. Slight nervousness, anxiety and excitement were the major players in this game. As usual though, after presenting to someone just once you start to calm down and really start to enjoy the whole event. I worked out the kinks in my presentation previous to the poster by presenting to myself but there is always something that will cause a slight stumble. Overall, I really enjoyed presenting my research because I finally felt confident that I was able to accurately portray our process and our findings. I particularly enjoyed the suggestions from certain visitors as well as their questions because they made me think about things I could have either done differently or try if I had more time. The time passed by very quickly and by the time I had presented to several people it was 3 o’clock and the poster presentation was over! Afterwards, we took our REU intern picture at the OIMB sign and enjoyed some brownies. Nancy, one of the fellow interns, had to leave three days earlier because she was leaving for her semester abroad in Barbados. Nancy, Ana and I all went to the famed 7 Devils Brewery to have our farewell dinner. There we all ordered the Devil’s flock, fries, and cornbread with blackberry butter. We were absolutely stuffed with food, so we came back to our dorms to help Nancy move out. She was on her way. On Thursday, one of the graduate students had a master’s thesis defense. It was a really interesting two part research study on Aequorea victoria, a jellyfish, and the distribution of pyrosomes. Afterwards, there was a potluck to celebrate her successful defense. Friday was our final whole day in Charleston, Oregon. It was definitely bittersweet. It was the last time we would be in lab with our cultures, the last time where we would eat in the dining hall, the last time when all the REU interns would really be together. That Friday evening there was a potluck at Richard’s home. It was a great way to really have those last conversation with all the mentors, graduate students and REU interns. The following morning we all went our separate ways an just like that it was over. My Final Thoughts on this REU experience: I think overall I didn’t have any real expectations for this experience other than immersing myself in marine biological research. Previous to this internship, I had absolutely no exposure to the field and now I truly feel like I have an idea of what this field entails, the work, effort, and joys. I believe that the planning of this program was exceptional. Everything went smoothly and personally I did not have any problems with my mentor. In fact, I really enjoyed his style of teaching and his exemplary advice. If I could go back in time and redo this experience I would. It was a one of a kind summer.
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One week left! At this point, it feels like the days are flying by and there is not enough time to do and finish everything I want to do. I am still gathering and analyzing data from our research in order to see its significance and to use it on my research poster. The hours I spend in lab are never enough and I always end up coming back in ‘til late to try and get as much done as possible. I learned how to make kymographs using Fiji, so that I could record the local ciliary reversal in our organisms. In my opinion, the kymograph looks really interesting and is similar to a movie. It is a bunch of stacked pictures, and it takes a slice of that and you can move through it to watch it. It’s a slice of a video and it shows the movement of the cilia. Flow fields measure the velocity of a fluid; I learned how to record artifactual flow field videos. This Tuesday, the first draft of our poster was due and we all received very useful suggestions and remarks from our Principal Investigators (PIs) as well as the rest of the REU interns. This Friday our posters were due to our PIs. It almost felt like déjà vu but I definitely think that this schedule of formulating and editing our posters makes things less stressful overall and keeps us interns organized and conscious of our time. A really amazing event this week was the Marine Invertebrate Ball. All the interns and the other undergraduate students from the summer semester dressed up, strutted and posed on the catwalk. Truly, every costume that I saw was well thought out. After the contest, we all ate our cupcakes and danced to some throwback music. It was super fun! This week I learned how to stain organisms ,from our growing cultures, with antibodies. It is quite a long process; it took five and a half hours. To prepare for this process, we previously fixated some organisms. We used a primary and a secondary antibody in order to stain the organisms nerve cells. This is necessary so that their nerve cells can be viewed from a confocal microscope. Ana and I actually had a hard time finding our fixated organisms in their preserved vials. After searching for them extensively, we came to the conclusion that while we had fixated our organisms they stuck to the inside of the pipette we were using. This blatantly meant that we had fewer fixated organisms which made them precious. The antibody staining went pretty smoothly once we figured out the organism count. This week all the REU interns had an informal presentation of our research at the Charleston Marine Life Center (CMLC); this center has many different species of organisms, including Oregon native organisms as well as invasive species that now make their homes on the Oregon coast, for example the Dungeness Crab. The CMLC also has the skeleton structures of many organisms like the baleen whale, sea lions, sea otters and more. We presented in the morning and through the afternoon. The center’s visitors ranged from toddlers to professors. It was really fun and exciting to see the children get fascinated by our presentations, our props and science all together. It was almost like I could see their synapses firing and new neuronal pathways forming. Their eyes widened when they played with our sand dollars and it was just a really comforting and confirming notion to see that we can get children fascinated by science at such a young age. This past Friday we visited the University of Oregon’s main campus. I fell in love with that campus. It was beautifully constructed and felt like I was in a park with science buildings and knowledge surrounding me. Their science library was so impressive. The first floor was similar to a lounge café and the second floor had their study rooms, a makerspace ,which had a 3D printer and lasers ,a hemisphere that was full of video games that you could rent out for any and every console imaginable. I really loved their classrooms in there. They had moveable desks and each desk had personal whiteboards on the side for the students to have. Those classrooms’ construction and blueprint were built to nurture student’s learning process. We then visited Dr. Sutherland’s lab where we had a stimulating conversation about her research with gelatinous organisms across phylogeny. Next, we went to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History; this was an amazing experience because the layout of the museum and the murals that it had a nice flow and they were really captivating . When I went to the gift shop I had stumbled across two cards, whose, artwork were so beautiful, and I found that the artist who painted the murals and the artist who had made these cards were the same man, Ray Troll. I purchased my first piece of artwork, Something Fishy Comes This Way. Then, we made our way to downtown Eugene and stumbled across a wonderful bookstore and boutique. At that point we were all hungry and settled on eating at Sizzle Pie. Now let me tell you, their vegan pizza was glorious and amazing; it was so good that I would say it beat Costco Pizza out of the water. That’s quite a big statement and we finally headed back home. |
AuthorHi! My name is Kostantina Orselli and I am transferring to California State University of Northridge. My interests include hiking, kayaking, playing with my dog, hanging out with friends, watching movies and more. I am ecstatic to be experiencing this opportunity at OIMB! Archives
August 2018
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