Week 8

Hello, I hope everyone is doing well and welcome back!

This week has been an interesting one as I have been hit with drawbacks in my project that I did not see coming. Last week, I got a minor cold (could be from the bacteria I’m working with or maybe flu season is here already) and that cold spread to the rest of my family this week. I was unable to go to Arizona State University and continue doing my research due to the fact that my mom was sick and that I needed her to be with me at the lab (one of the drawbacks of being under 18 while working in research). I’m not sure whether to laugh or be mad at the irony of being set back by bacteria while working with bacteria but I now better understand the reason why universities provide so much health services after experiencing just how much being sick can set one back on their work.

My inability to go to the labs gave me the opportunity to think about my senior project presentation. I will not be able to talk in depth about the data and results for my project because of the setbacks and the fact that my project required much more time than what I was given to produce significant results. I decided that I would focus more on the experience and how research really is as a career or for graduate students. I hope that I will be able to produce even the smallest results when I return to the labs to run my final trial next week. Mrs. Nath brought up an important point in my meeting this week which was that there is the possibility that the general public, who does not understand the difficulties of research, may view my lack of results as a product of laziness or incompetence. I hope that I will be able to produce results so I can at least show that some progress was made in my time at ASU’s labs.

This week was uneventful compared to my previous weeks but it gave me the breathing room to think about my project’s presentation and what I should do in the the very real case that I did not produce any results in my remaining time at the ASU labs.

I will see you all next week where I will hopefully have at least the smallest bit of data.

- CJ Pimentel