My 10 weeks of intense summer research are now over. At first glance, my summer may not seem to be much different than the other one - still research in Gottwald, still living in the apartments, still starting earlier than most people in order to go home earlier than most people. But in fact, it was pretty different.
Starting with the research itself. I am not working in the same research lab as last summer. If last summer I was doing analysis, now I am doing organic chemistry - more or less the same thing I was doing all year long and I am pretty sure it’s the same thing I’ll be doing at least until I graduate.
There were 5 students working in the Downey group this summer. By the end of 10 or 8 weeks we got to know each other pretty well. I already knew all of them, but there’s nothing compared with working together daily and having to learn to cooperate by deciding who can use when the only 2 reflux condensers we had for a while, arguing over the only ether squirt bottle, or trying to squeeze NMR samples during someone else’s appointment because the NMRs were overly booked by all labs doing intense research this summer. Not to mention the challenges in finding group meeting times convenient to everyone (even though Dr. Downey usually had veto rights) or songs to listen that everyone likes (which actually worked out pretty well most of the time).
the Downey group, summer 2011
In the first part of the summer, I was working on the same project as during last school year. We did not have a lot of success during the year, but it seemed to me that the summer was even less successful. I was very driven and trying to do a lot. I was often setting up 4 reactions in the same time in the morning and 4 more in the afternoon (my record is 6 reactions in the same time), taking some 30-minute lunch breaks while the reactions were running, sometimes having a hard time figuring out which reaction is which because I did them all at once and having to repeat them, and going back to my apartment at 5 or 6 or 7 pm too exhausted to get out of bed for 2-3 hours.
one of my reactions from the first part of the summer
I managed to fill one lab notebook in a month. According to other people in my lab, having many lab notebooks means that you worked a lot, but I discovered it’s not true. That’s because you have to write all your reactions, but if your reactions don’t work, you do nothing else, and if they do work, you have to go though a lot to purify your products.
Halfway though the summer, I was offered the chance to move to a related project that the lab has been working on for 5 years, and I took it. As soon as I did, many good results started to show up! My new reactions took longer and I didn’t have equipment to set up more reactions in the same time, which meant that I had plenty of waiting time and I usually had enough energy left to make it to the night. But not everything is paradise: the reagents I am working with now have a very terrible smell that persists in everything they touch.
This summer, I lived in a very international apartment. I shared it with another Romanian girl, a girl from Cyprus and a girl from Afghanistan. My roommates wanted to experiment cooking, something I didn’t quite dare to do on my own for fear of poisoning anyone. But after helping my roommates a couple of times, I plucked up the courage to also do it on my own. And I even ventured to other people’s apartments to cook together.
me and my favorite Cypriot, with our first attempt at baking - we baked a delicious vegetable souffle from a modified Turkish recipe.
We also cooked traditional food for each other and even for an outside guest once. I came to the conclusion that the best way to eat traditional, day-to-day food from other cultures is to live with people who can cook it. Unfortunately, many ingredients required for an authentic Romanian meal are very hard to find in the US, if they can be found at all. But fortunately, my Romanian roommate found a brand of corn gris at Kroger, which allowed us to make polenta. Polenta is a staple food in Romania, especially for poor people who use it instead of bread because corn is cheaper than wheat, but has also been adapted to many restaurant-like dishes as appetizer or as a side to the main entree. Polenta is officially in my top 3 foods that I miss while I’m away from home.
home-made polenta, served with sour cream and cheese, sitting on the poster my roommates made for my birthday.
This summer, I had my good series of weekends doing nothing but sleeping and occasionally volunteering online, but I also had a bigger share of traveling. I went to New York for more than half a day, like over spring break. I had plenty of time to venture in museums, to walk or have picnics in Central Park, to shop or window shop, go to the Metropolitan Opera or try countless New York restaurants. My visit also included a home-made Indian dinner also attended by a Nobel laureate.
the New York view from close to Brooklyn Bridge
posing as spider-woman in Times Square
I also went to Princeton, to pay a visit to the girl who came visit me here on campus early in my freshman year. It was a rainy day and we had to spend some time running away from rain, but overall it was fun and Princeton has a pretty campus.
In front of my friend’s residential college at Princeton
Einstein’s house from back when he was a professor at Princeton
When I came back from Princeton, I realized that I only had a little more than 2 weeks on campus, and more than 200 dining dollars. That’s what happens when you cook too much. From that moment on, I started eating more often at d-hall (I even made it for breakfast, something I hadn’t done since the school year ended), I had to eat a lot of microwaveable food and of course ice cream, from ETC, and took the people in my lab out to lunch at Passport on my dining dollars.
My summer would have basically be perfect if it weren’t for a little incident in my last shopping adventure. I found this hand cream at a big sale and decided to buy it. I tested it on the back of my left hand to smell its great scent. All good and easy until the next day I found my left hand fingers were getting red, and by Friday night when I had to start packing, my entire hand became red, swollen, and painful. It’s totally not fun packing with one hand, traveling with a red hand that made people stare at you, and scaring your Mom like crazy as soon as she sees you after 6 months (the what-do-they-do-to-you-there sort of thing). But that’s not the main problem. The day after I got home I went see a doctor. Diagnosis: hand-cream allergy. How on Earth did I get this allergy when I used hand cream before (though not that brand) and I was getting pride in being allergic to nothing but aspirin? But that’s not the biggest problem either. The doctor gave me a prescription that requires eating food with no salt! I was getting excited to try real home-made polenta and other delicious Mom-specific cuisine. Now I am home and still have to wait until I try the food I miss most. That’s my big problem right now, and I blame it all on that hand cream. Guys, don’t buy anything discounted from now on!
