Week 1 - My project

Working At My Deck In The Lab

This is the first time for me as a blogger so I really don’t know what to say, but here goes…...

Coming from the Caribbean, I had no idea what to expect from Oregon. I really didn’t expect it to be so COLD! But after being here for over a week, I had gotten somewhat used to the cold and the 3-hour time change; though you will still notice me as the only person wearing gloves in the summer. This is the first summer internship program that I have ever gone to, so I was very nervous yet quite curious and happy for such an experience. Orientation was very interesting because I got to meet all the interns and hear about their projects. It was a relief to know that I was not the only one there who didn’t know much about their project. At orientation, I also met my senior mentor, Tawnya Peterson who shares a lab with her husband Joseph Needoba. Because of this, on most days, it seems like I have two senior mentors instead of one. I think it’s really cool because sometimes one explains something better or more detailed than the other which helps me to understand what I had to do.

My project for this summer is to measure the concentration of Acetaminophen in the Columbia River. It’s pretty different from any research that I have done so far because I am a Marine Biology major but I am always up for learning how to do something new. The one thing that makes my project even more interesting is that it has never been done before. So for the past week, I have been reading papers on Acetaminophen in blood serum because that is what most papers measure Acetaminophen concentrations in and also water is closely related to blood. From the information in the paper, I have to create a method.

There were several things that I saw this week that I have never seen before. The biggest one was the Bonneville Dam in Washington. There, I saw and learnt so much information on my favorite fish; salmon. I also saw a ten foot surgeon fish! I know this probably wouldn’t interest anyone else, but I also saw a bunch of squirrels. There are no squirrels in the Caribbean, so I thought that there were so cool. After the dam trip we took a “short easy” hike. I made it to the waterfall then gave up. There was an OHSU picnic lately that day which was also wonderful. I actually went outside without gloves. On Saturday, we went to the Farmers Market in Hillsboro and the Saturday Market in Portland. We have a Saturday Market back home, but it was nothing like that. There so many vendors selling their different crafts and so many dogs. This week has been a great start to what should be a wonderful ten weeks. Let the fun begin!!!!!!