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Week 2 - LOTS of activity!

This week I have mainly been catching up on the reading Brenda assigned and attending the many events Vanessa had planned for us. Monday was the NSF site visit which turned out to be quite informative and interesting. Most people I'm sure rarely wonder where the money is coming from in research facilities, rather they are more interested in the results. Today gave us all a chance to see the process and the hoops everyone has to go through to get funded and remain that way!

Wednesday was our tribal law class with Elizabeth Furse. I had no idea so many of our natural resources were protected or effected by Indian laws or treaties, and they are often effected in many ways one would not even consider!! This class will be really cool when we start hearing the speakers talk from different areas about a wide variety of topics.

My favorite day was Thursday and our OHSU visit. Our visit was amazing. I have never really been to OHSU aside from a few trips to its hospital and I was very impressed. A little background: up until this year I had planned on graduating with a degree in chemistry, getting my masters in teaching and then teach high school science. During my time as an undergrad, no one has really explained to me how grad school works and all of my options. After meeting with a few grad students from the school and actually getting more of a grasp of how it is set up and the logistics of it... it is something I am much more strongly considering. The best part was our tour of the bioengineering research facilities. It thought it was interesting that because it was a new area for OHSU they were focusing on 4 small, lesser studied fields so as to get a foothold which they will eventually probably expand upon. Some of my favorite parts were learning about the new stroke/heart attack drug they developed (were developing?) which could be administered immediately as opposed to hours later after determining the cause. They also have a microscope in which the image you see is not light reflected from a surface, it shows movement or light reflected off of two surfaces. Which, according to one of the students, shows much better contrast and resolution.

I think this week I get to really get started in the lab because Brenda gets back on Thursday! woohoo!