Megan Gabruk, Entry #5, Halfway Through

I can’t believe I’m halfway through my summer experience. It has been great and at least I have five more weeks in my lab. This week really began on Tuesday since I had Monday off for the Fourth of July. Because of this, I had to reschedule my meeting with Kate for 8 AM on Tuesday. At that meeting we talked about what I had been working on the past week and what my goals were for this week. She also gave me great advice on college. It’s really nice that everyone in the lab is concerned for each other’s future whether it be medical school or a PhD in psychology or anything else people in the lab are interested in. Kate also presented to the RAs on language which was an interesting talk. She mentioned that scientists often use the term gender when they really mean sex; I didn’t even know there was a difference until she said that. The rest of Tuesday, I finished my other Mendeley project, which Kate was impressed that I got it done so fast.

            On Wednesday, I had to solve an issue with the Facebook ad because when the ad was modified with changes we wanted to make, it got disapproved. The ad needs to be IRB approved and follow Facebook guidelines. So, when it was changed, it no longer worked with the Facebook algorithm because of the way it was phrased. I fixed the issue by reposting the original ad and restarting the ad campaign. I also tested the video cameras again which suddenly stop recording after thirty minutes. We are working with surveillance cameras because we want to be able to zoom and move the cameras around during the interaction visit of the study. Unfortunately, they have not been working properly because they are not designed for our specific purpose, but they still should be able to work. So, we have already had two long phone calls to attempt to fix the problem, but that has not worked yet. At Kate’s RAs weekly meeting, Kate taught us how to write a good cover letter which was really helpful. Also, she taught us some statistics and mentioned when to use a chi square test which I could relate to thanks to AP Biology.

            On Thursday, I worked on writing a scientific summary for a grant we are thinking about applying for. I was given six pages of a previous grant proposal, not including references and had to cut it down to one page including references. Also, we had a lab meeting on the Google project the whole lab is working on. We made progress and came up with some great ideas that will hopefully be funded. On Friday, I worked on finding more funding opportunities.

            This weekend I plan to finish my summer work for AP Psychology and AP Calculus so that I can work on college applications the rest of the weekends I am here. It has been really fun living alone, and I love California weather which makes the experience even better.