Christopher Fu, Entry #1, First Week

"Oh, Professor Rappe? He's gone for the next few weeks."

Not exactly what I was expecting to hear at 9:30 A.M. after sitting for an hour and thirty minutes in front of Dr. Rappe's office. It was June 13th, my first day at the Rappe Group lab at UPenn, and my PI had just left on a trip to Japan and New Mexico the weekend before. I was thinking I was going to meet him the first day, but that plan hit a wall pretty quickly. Unfortunately, at that time, it was pretty early in the morning--apparently the majority of the group doesn't arrive until 10 or later.

After 30 minutes of searching two floors in the chemistry department building, I finally found a postdoc who was part of the Rappe Group, Youngkuk. He introduced me to everyone else in the group as well as one of my two mentors, Diomedes (he goes by Dio). Dio showed me to my desk and helped me set up my computer--which turned out to be an ancient piece of Dell technology that had the processing power of an iPhone 3. Luckily, I don't need those processors on the desktop computer, because I have access to a supercomputer to do my calculations instead.

The Setup

Rachel takes the desk directly to the right of mine. She's another intern--an undergraduate student from the Univerisity of Richmond--who has just recently been working on the surface catalyst project for the last couple of weeks. She, another undergraduate named Chase, and my other mentor, Rob, put me through a crash course in Linux and Python programming as well as some chemistry concepts. They also taught me how to use Opium (it's an acronym, I swear), a computer program designed by Dr. Rappe himself that I will be using to calculate pseudowavefunctions and pseudopotentials (think of them as mathematical approximations for complex atomic structures) for elements on the periodic table. I've been given the task to produce a pseudopotential manganese and iridium, partially because those were the elements they have yet to find a suitable pseudopotential for, and partially because it will be helpful in Rachel's project.

In general, in my first week I:

1. Read multiple chapters in two chemistry textbooks about atomic structures, wavefunctions, surface catalysts, and other chemistry voodoo
1. Takeaway: Chemistry is hard
2. Had my brain fried in  Rob's 2-hour "intro to chemistry" lectures
1. Takeaway: Chemistry is really hard
3. Spent hours on Codecademy furiously typing on my keyboard because my Python codes would never work
1. Takeaway: Programming is hard

But truth be told, I really like it here; everyone is really nice, supportive, and collaborative. I love the working environment, and from the weather to the people, University City has been a fantastic place to stay in so far. My apartment is around the size of a Potter room, but with a WIC, private bathroom, a kitchen on the sixth floor, and a gym on the first, there's really not much to complain about. As for food, I readily have access to a Starbucks, Chipotle, Wawa, an awesome Korean restaurant called U-Town, and a lifetime supply of instant ramen noodles (I'm probably going to regret this diet when cross country season comes along); this week, I plan on starting to cook for myself. I'm rooming with Joe, which has been great so far, and there are a ton of other Peddie kids around campus--and more to come--that I met/plan to meet up with over the summer. 

And from reading all of the other posts, I'm glad that everyone is liking their lab and the places they're at as well. And I also apologize for the lack of photos in this post--I'll be sure to take more as the weeks go on.

-Chris