He Did What

Today, one of our classmates, Jonathan, did not show up in the morning. Dr. Fineschi was very concerned about him and called someone to go look for him. It was really nice that she didn’t send someone to look for him because she wanted to drag him to class; she just wanted to make sure Jonathan was alright, which, was we found out later, was a good thing.

Picture of my classroom

Nevertheless, we began class. We had lecture for about an hour in the morning, mostly about the evolution of diseases. We talked about sickle cell disease and went to the lab to work on the computers. We went on a program to learn about hemoglobin, and I partnered with Elaine again. We were allowed to leave for lunch as soon as we finished. Interestingly, our whole class finished with the work at approximately the same time.

After lunch, Jonathan finally showed up. He actually had a migraine and was not just skipping class like we had thought. He also told us something really alarming: he took four or more pills to soothe his migraine. Another person searched on Google and apparently, Jonathan half-overdosed himself. While I am not sure how accurate that information is, I do know it sounded like he took more than he should. Either way, fortunately, he seemed fine enough (although Dr. Fineschi still gave him permission to leave whenever he felt like he needed to), and class continued.

Before lecture

We spent the class talking more about sickle cell disease, which of course, eventually led to a lecture on malaria (some background info: an allele for sickle cell disease gives a person resistance for malaria). We visited topics like treatment and spread of malaria. There was class discussion, which was super chill and sharing our ideas was fun.

Around 2 PM, we headed for the lab and continued on our Lake Michigan Water lab. We found some E. coli and other coliform bacteria growing on our agar gel. However, that didn’t mean the water is not safe to swim in; the number of bacteria growing is within the official standard, and Dr. Fineschi assured us Lake Michigan’s water is very clean. We did some streaking to get pure cultures of the bacteria we wanted, and we worked on that until the end of class.

Before we left, Dr. Fineschi also talked a bit about the research project that will be due at the end of the course. She provided some links and websites for us to begin thinking about our ideas and what we want to research, so I will be doing that tonight.

Pretty places I jogged to

I went out for a light jog before dinner. I am still not used to the humidity, and I hate the warm stickiness, so I only jogged for ten minutes (haha). Then, I ate dinner, and right after, I went to one of the activities.

Today I went to yoga, which was really stressful. Gabi, the RA leading the activity, led us to the intermediate yoga class, and I had no idea what was going on for most of the time. I actually accidentally fell asleep for 10 minutes when we were supposed to lay down for breathing exercise. Oops. Yoga class ended at 7:45 PM. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for yoga, but it was still an interesting experience.

Back in my dorm, I continued the reading on malaria that is assigned to us. Hopefully, I will to be able to use my critical thinking skills on the article so I can contribute in the class discussions tomorrow!