Finally some good data

Really, the biggest excitement this week was the arrival of the new column for the HPLC. I know it sounds a bit lame, but it arrived in time for me to feasibly finish some of the data before I leave, and before I have to give my presentation next week. There were a few adjustments needed to the different methods after it arrived, mostly since the 10 year old column probably had a lot of its packing material worn down, so the retention time was a lot shorter, since things could just whiz through that column. Otherwise, this week, I did some trials at 65 degrees, which went fairly quickly, but I think I might have been good enough at estimating some of the runs that I might not need to re-do them. Although, I'll probably still have to re-do some of the runs next week. That's how research goes, apparently. But, even though I've taken samples and done the runs for DNT, right now we're just going to focus on DNAN, so that I can be sure to have one completed data set from my time here. I'll see how much better the data from the new column is, but I might need to re-collect all the data from all of my experiements, which wouldn't be fun, but might be needed.

The only other interesting activity this week was the focus group session on Monday, where a couple of people came in and had a closed-door session with the remaining interns, where they asked us how we thought the internship had gone, and what were the best and worst things from the summer, and other such questions. I think the most interesting thing was hearing about the experiences of the other interns, and seeing what we had in common. I hope the information is of even more interest and use to CMOP itself. It is a bit of a weird feeling knowing that the internship is coming to an end, and seeing other interns leave. Mostly, I just don't think I want summer to be over quite yet.