My major in university was Microbiology and Immunology, so I spent many, MANY hours in the Wesbrook…read moreBuilding. It's one of the older buildings, and inside is a large lecture hall, classrooms, offices, and of course the undergraduate microbiology labs. Students in the microbiology program are required to complete four lab courses; two in third year, and two in fourth year. In order to have somewhere to store their lab coats and safety glasses, each student is also given a locker, which is in the Wesbrook Building. They are not much more than wooden cubbies with locks, but they are large enough to also fit a backpack and textbooks, and having a (free!) locker on campus, near the majority of your classrooms, was such a blessing.
My last semester of my undergrad was consumed by the BIG LAB PROJECT. The majority of our last lab course was spent working on a group project. In groups of three or four, you had to design and execute a research project, which included ordering supplies and preparing the materials and media needed, such as sterilizing test tubes. The project was extremely time consuming, and it was HORRIBLE. It was mostly horrible because the people in my group were complete bitches, and treated me like crap. They ignored any contributions I tried to make, didn't notify me of any changes to the protocol, and called me stupid when I asked a question, amongst other things, so in the end, I pretty much didn't even understand what our project was about. (Oh, but they absolutely relied on me to bring the pens and calculator -- they couldn't seem to function without my pens and calculator.) Also, they designed a project that was far too complicated and time-consuming to comfortably complete within the time frame allotted, one semester. It was absolute hell, and I could not wait to graduate. (In case you're curious, the title of our paper was "The Role of Alginate in Gentamicin Antibiotic Susceptibility during the Early Stages of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 Biofilm Establishment". Sounds awful, doesn't it?)
For our project, we needed a LOT of Petri plates. This entailed: making the media; sterilizing it in the autoclave; allowing it to cool; pouring the agar into the sterile Petri plates; and then allowing the agar to cool and solidify. This was a process that would take better part of the day, and it was just the PREPARATION in order to DO the experiment itself, and only one small part, at that. (Another part of the project included using cyanide compounds, for some reason that I no longer remember.)
One day, I had been working in the lab all day long. It was about 8 or 9pm at night, and I was nearly dead with exhaustion. The sterile Petri plates were finally done, ready to use the next day. Before I was able to leave the lab, I had to pack up the Petri plates in bags, and take them to the storeroom. I carefully packed up all the plates -- well over a hundred, and placed them on a cart. I was slowly and carefully pushing the cart towards the storeroom, when the strap on my backpack, that was on the lower shelf of the cart, became entangled in the wheel. The cart fell over and all my precious Petri plates fell to the ground, ruined. I swore SO loudly, dropped to the ground, and had a full-on temper tantrum. My professor came running out of his office at the commotion and saw me sitting on the ground, amongst dozens of Petri plates scattered everywhere, sobbing.
Like my Petri plates, my spirit was broken. I somehow managed to graduate, but I had many challenges during my schooling, and that one moment, with me crying, sitting amongst hundreds of broken Petri plates scattered all over the hallway, with an upturned cart beside me, was the epitome of my struggles in school.
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