Week 6

(Reason for being late- I was trying to transfer confocal microscope images to my laptop to insert them into this week’s blog post but the specific program hasn’t been recognizing them. Hopefully they’ll be ready for next week!)

As mentioned previously, the Silver and Johnson labs often work together due to the research overlap in neuroscience. My workspace is usually in the Johnson lab but I go up and down the stairs of Winston quite frequently each day. The research lab is both orderly and quite collaborative and also very hands-off and isolated. Unless you’re using a specialized machine, you’ll be working with other people in the same room. Office doors are always open and we generally know what another person is working on. At the same time, you can choose to work completely different hours as long as the work gets done. There’s a graduate student who comes in around 1PM every day and doesn’t leave till late into the night. As someone still learning procedures, I appreciate how people are always close by to answer any questions but not constantly monitoring what you’re doing (especially helpful to not have someone directly behind you the first time you do something on your own!). Most of today’s weekly meeting was spent helping a graduate prepare for a job interview if that gives another insight into the collaborative work culture.

The highlight of the week was the imaging that I unfortunately couldn’t get into a less specialized format. While I’ll need to run additional tests and attempt to control the auto fluorescence from parts other than the brain, the initial imaging results are at least indicative that the procedure worked.