Emmy Wang, Entry #4, Nearing the End

My time at the lab is coming to an end with one week left. This past week my work has mostly consisted of working on my laptop and observing the other members of the lab in their projects. On Monday I showed Dr. Xi how to prepare, stain, and dissect the brain, which was a little daunting since it had been four weeks since I last did any of those steps, and even then I wasn't too confident. After spending about 20 minutes trying to catch the moth while the postdoc looked on, I definitely felt a little flustered, but soldiered on. Fortunately the rest went more smoothly.

Dr. Berg and I also returned to the other campus to try out the new confocal microscope and scan two more of my preparations. The new confocal is smaller and faster and basically better in every way. While the first two scans at the old confocal took about 40 minutes each, the new one only took 13 minutes.

The new confocal

The past couple days I have been working on a short presentation that I will present to the whole lab next Tuesday, including the new masters students, about what I have done and the data I've obtained. Also a little daunting, but Dr. Berg is always ready to answer any questions I have and tell me more about the images I have. In addition to this, I have also been helping with some housekeeping tasks around the lab since the lab doesn't have a technician. This includes moving around the pupae and insects, diluting more ethanol for the dehydration process, and cleaning and organizing the microscope area and equipment.

Moving newly delivered pupae into the containers

My mom had to fly down to Stavanger for the rest of my EXP time so I'm now staying by myself. After I finish at the lab I like to go down to the city centre and walk around and maybe grab a bite to eat. School has officially started so there's a lot more bustle. It's strange that I will be done in one week but I have enjoyed my time here thoroughly.