Mia Salas, Week 1: Trains, Lab, and Phun in Philly!

When I was in 7th grade my dad told me that he wouldn't let me go to the mall alone with a friend because I was "directionally challenged".  Which was very true. So you could imagine the surprise when I completed my first day in Philly without getting lost once and successfully getting on the train there and back (thank god for Google Maps). Too be fair though, the week before I started EXP, I went to Philly with my brother, Jake, and we practiced walking to my lab and then spent the day finding cool places in the city. The train is actually really easy (shout out to Bridgid Greed for telling me about University City Station and the West Trenton Line). I get on the train at 7:06am and I get off at 8:35am at University City. From there, I just walk about 10ish minutes to my lab.  On the way back, sometimes I do the same thing and go back to University City station, but other times I take the 20ish minute walk to 30th St. Station when there aren't many trains at University City or if the weather is really nice and I feel like walking more.

On my first day I walked to where my PI told me to meet, and then right when I get there, I got a text from him asking if I can actually go to a different address because their lab moved recently and he forgot to tell me. I sort of freaked out because I thought I wouldn't be able to find it or maybe it was really far away. But when I googled the address it said I was 1 minute away from my destination, because the new lab space was next door.  Dr. Vite (my PI) introduced me to everyone in the lab.  The two girls closest to my age are Kate, who is about to be a senior in college, and Sam, who just graduated college. Everybody else is much older, but it is a pretty small lab.  Over this week I have learned so much. Dr. Swain showed me how he cuts and stains brain tissue, and he gave me the best bio/chem review session over the course of one day when he explained how and why he performs each step.  I attended a lab meeting, in which everybody talked about “vacation” days they wanted, the progress of particular studies, finances, and presentations. Dr. Vite asked if I wanted to present at the lab meeting on July 26^th! Another day Kate and I got to watch Dr. Vite cut segments off of cat brains that were frozen in dry ice.  Sam took us under her wing a different day and we helped her with all of the organization/management of the lab, because she’s in charge of basically making sure everything runs smoothly. We had to sort through old tissues and organize them by wild type, affected with NPC, heterozygous, and unknown for Dr. Vite to look at, and then we would throw away the ones he didn’t need anymore (which was actually such a tedious process with biohazard bags and everything). We also had to do so many errands that day, such as communicating with a guy to come and fix the freezer, talking with other labs downstairs about available tissue, and constantly reupdating the database whenever we would throw away tissues no longer needed.  It’s crazy how much preparation and organization actually goes into a lab, which in some ways seems more important than the actual experiments. Overall, the dynamic of the lab is so great, and I feel so comfortable there. Everybody includes me and wants to show me what they are working on. I love talking and hanging out with Sam and Kate. Kate and I normally go to lunch together, either in the meeting room or sometimes there are catered lunches for all the labs in the building outside in the courtyard. Dr. Vite and I talked about my project too, which I am going to start next week. It’s also really cool that Kate and I both do practically the same things even though she’s four years older. They both can’t believe that my school has a program like EXP. People are so shocked whenever I tell them I'm in high school. I met this girl on my train ride back yesterday, and she was doing a lab internship at Temple University and we were comparing experiences. When I eventually told her that I'm in high school, she didn't even know what to say she was so shocked. We think its so normal at Peddie to do a program like EXP, but its really not and its so cool that we actually get to do this at our age. 

I really love my lab, but I also love just being in Philly. After lab, I’ve explored the city and went to Urban Outfitters, Penn Bookstore, Chipotle, Shake Shack and many other places. I gave coffee another chance one morning because I was so tired, and I actually liked it. I even made a friend in Urban who lives in China, but she just graduated college and she’s doing a summer program at UPenn, so we’re going to hang out sometime next week. We met when we were both trying on hats in a mirror there, and she asked me if I thought her hat looked too big on her haha (how true friendships are made !). I’m also going to meet up with Bridgid a lot this summer, because she’s at CHOP. I’ve already hung out with Lizzy, Derek, and Trung! It’s great because I like walking around in the city alone, but there’s also so many people that I know around and friends that are coming to visit. I’m having such a great time, and I’m looking forward to the next few weeks!