(no subject)
Today's entry needs to be twice as good as the last one, because if I were to suddenly die or be abducted by some nefarious person or creature, I don't want the last thing people remember me writing to be a discourse on taking refuge in pooping.
Let's talk about what I do in school! I've recently been working in a lab on north campus that houses many different experiments under the direction of a professor whom I haven't met and rarely seen, but the particular project I'm working on is, basically, the development of tiny scaffold-like structures so that pharma companies can use them in drug development. The scaffolds consist of tiny, tightly-packed beads that adhere together to make a dense network of polymeric stuff. Then, someone could presumably stick a bunch of cells on it and they would proceed to grow across the scaffold, which eventually dissolves. That way, when companies are scanning for new compounds from which they could derive a new drug, they can test chemicals on a fancy three dimensional tissue sample instead of a dumb flat one. For the past month or so I've been experimenting (under the direction of a graduate student) with different materials and methods of production for the beads used to make the scaffolds. It sounds complicated, but really, all it is is some jury rigged contraption of tubes and syringes poking into each other and spitting out beads. Here is a simple diagram:
what I didn't sign up for was having to work with lots of hazardous chemicals, and apparently that's all the grad student ever uses in his experiments. My first day I got to pour hydrogen fluoride in some beakers, which will apparently fucking kill you if you so much as look at it the wrong way. Then, later we were working with toluene and dichloromethane (some kind of carcinogens or something) and he says, "Oh it's all right, as long as we work in the fume hood and wear gloves it'll be A-OK," but in order to get the experiment set up we have to stick our heads into the fume hood anyway, so we can put the experiment together and monitor it properly. Then a few days later, he says, "Sorry guys, turns out this lady from the health services has been harassing me about performing experiments with toluene and dichloromethane and we need some kind of special masks to keep doing it. So, sorry for exposing you to it!" So if I end up getting some sort of face cancer, you'll know the whole story.
Also I'm taking a class called "Strategies for Sustainable Development," a business school class about green initiatives and environmental stewardship concerns in the corporate world. I've never heard the word "rapport" used so frequently and with so much conviction.
Also, I'm taking some classes called Chemical Engineering lab and Process Controls and Dynamics, and those are about as interesting as they sound. And figure drawing! maybe i'll take some pictures of what I did in that class when I get that stuff back.
In other news, I bought some kimchi yesterday and I just put it on top of basically everything I eat and it makes it all better.
Let's talk about what I do in school! I've recently been working in a lab on north campus that houses many different experiments under the direction of a professor whom I haven't met and rarely seen, but the particular project I'm working on is, basically, the development of tiny scaffold-like structures so that pharma companies can use them in drug development. The scaffolds consist of tiny, tightly-packed beads that adhere together to make a dense network of polymeric stuff. Then, someone could presumably stick a bunch of cells on it and they would proceed to grow across the scaffold, which eventually dissolves. That way, when companies are scanning for new compounds from which they could derive a new drug, they can test chemicals on a fancy three dimensional tissue sample instead of a dumb flat one. For the past month or so I've been experimenting (under the direction of a graduate student) with different materials and methods of production for the beads used to make the scaffolds. It sounds complicated, but really, all it is is some jury rigged contraption of tubes and syringes poking into each other and spitting out beads. Here is a simple diagram:
what I didn't sign up for was having to work with lots of hazardous chemicals, and apparently that's all the grad student ever uses in his experiments. My first day I got to pour hydrogen fluoride in some beakers, which will apparently fucking kill you if you so much as look at it the wrong way. Then, later we were working with toluene and dichloromethane (some kind of carcinogens or something) and he says, "Oh it's all right, as long as we work in the fume hood and wear gloves it'll be A-OK," but in order to get the experiment set up we have to stick our heads into the fume hood anyway, so we can put the experiment together and monitor it properly. Then a few days later, he says, "Sorry guys, turns out this lady from the health services has been harassing me about performing experiments with toluene and dichloromethane and we need some kind of special masks to keep doing it. So, sorry for exposing you to it!" So if I end up getting some sort of face cancer, you'll know the whole story.
Also I'm taking a class called "Strategies for Sustainable Development," a business school class about green initiatives and environmental stewardship concerns in the corporate world. I've never heard the word "rapport" used so frequently and with so much conviction.
Also, I'm taking some classes called Chemical Engineering lab and Process Controls and Dynamics, and those are about as interesting as they sound. And figure drawing! maybe i'll take some pictures of what I did in that class when I get that stuff back.
In other news, I bought some kimchi yesterday and I just put it on top of basically everything I eat and it makes it all better.