Oliver Crane, Entry #1, First Week!!

                I hope everyone are having good summers so far! It's been really cool living out here in California. My first week here at UCLA was pretty relaxed despite everything that had to be done in order to work at full capacity in my lab. After arriving on Sunday afternoon and moving into the small house that Danny, Ian, and I are renting for our 6 weeks here, we explored the food options in our neighborhood for a few hours and then settled down in preparation for our first day in our labs. The first task set before me was getting a background check which UCLA requires everyone working in its laboratories to do. This involved a lot of paperwork and having every single one of my fingers being scanned multiple times. After doing this I was sent to a different office which was surprisingly difficult to find. Eventually, I did finally find Human Resources where I was issued an official volunteer ID. After getting my ID I had to sit down in another office and sign even more paperwork, waiving my rights to any intellectual property (basically anything discovered at UCLA is the university’s property). By this point I had spent half the day running from office to office all over UCLA but I could at least finally email my PI telling her that I was cleared to begin working. My PI, Dr. Walwyn was very nice when we met and explained that all the various labs on their floor all share data and resources in order to maximize efficiency and productivity. After talking briefly, she immediately sent me off to a Lab Safety class which I needed to take in order to work with the mice in the lab.

My photo I.D.

 Overall, my first day was both exciting and extremely hectic. The rest of the week was far more relaxed as all the UCLA students who normally work in my lab were off on break for a few weeks, leaving only me, my post-doc, and my PI in the lab. A special highlight of the week though was seeing my post-doc perform a surgery on a mouse. The goal of the surgery was to put a catheter into the mouse’s vein so that drugs could be pumped directly into its bloodstream . However, the surgery went very badly and the post-doc accidentally sliced the mouse’s jugular vein causing blood to spurt everywhere. Although the mouse eventually bled to death and it was sad, the whole surgery was extremely interesting. My first week was really enjoyable (even if I didn’t get any lunch breaks) and I am looking forward to the rest of my time here!

My workstation in the lab.