Week #6 - Dark and Sad.......

This week was also filled with more method testing. We tried a new experiment which involves even more harmful chemicals. Since acetaminophen does breakdown once entered the body, we decided that we should probably also find a way to test for the most common breakdown product (p-aminophenol). Though we redid the test several times at high concentrations; we still could not get decent absorbance readings from the spectrophotometer. When I think about it, I think that I helped turned the Needoba/ Peterson lab from a simple oceanographic lab into a seriously chemical one.

This week didn’t really have a lot of things that I participated in. On Friday, we had our usually Brown bag discussion with Mr. James McAteer, who is the managing director of his own private QA/QC Solutions Company and a member of the Board of Directors for OAEP. His discussion made me realize how important it is to ensure that you look at your experiment from every aspect and ALWAYS pay attention to the statistics. I’m really happy now that I took that statistics class last semester (I wasn’t really happy when I was taking the class). That evening I went to the movies to see the new Batman movie and to all the Batman fans reading my blog; I am telling you that that is the coolest Batman movie ever!!!! If you haven’t already seen it; I fully encourage you to.

But that was basically the only thing that I did this weekend. The Lakes Crew left me to my own this weekend as each person went off their own way. I actually planned on going to the Saturday Market and the Japanese Garden on Sunday (all by myself which would have been a huge leap for me) but things have a way of not going according to plans. This same Friday evening, I got some really bad news. One of my really close friends who was recovering from cancer told me that things aren’t going as good as could be hoped for; it’s actually getting worse. With news like that, I didn’t really have the strength to do anything this weekend. I only now hope that the doctors are wrong and everything will be ok………