Week 9

Welcome back and I hope everyone is doing well as well as we enter these final weeks of our Senior Projects!

This week was my final week at the lab because I do not have enough remaining time to run more trials. I am so happy that my experiment was finally able to produce results. Though the data that I gathered was minimal and did not answer my hypothesis, I was still able to produce something that shows my project had some progress and at this point with all of the setbacks, I will take anything that I can get. Usually I would be mad or disappointed with not accomplishing everything that I told myself that I would, but I’m just relieved and happy to have something. One of the lab assistants that I was working with told me that I accomplished more than what most bio undergrads there have done which made me laugh a bit (and then I realized that they apparently couldn’t follow instructions which means those lab assistant jobs are mine).

My data at the lab is small and probably won’t produce any waves in the scientific community but I can use the data and experience along with my connection with Mr. Tahmahkera to try more ambitious research projects at ASU in the future. That and I can learn fun new things at the lab while working with the people there. For example, I found out that you can make glow-in-the-dark plants with the materials at ASU’s labs from Brandon which is something that I look forward to doing.

Now that I was finally able to get data from my experiment, I remembered that I had other parts of my project that I needed to do other than the PowerPoint presentation. I have been so absorbed with trying to produce results at the lab that I forgot that I had to also work on a research paper. I decided to start working on the paper this week but I remembered that I rushed the research for this second project and forgot to save the research papers that I used. So, I had a fun time doing a scavenger hunt through my internet history looking for the research papers that I used to come up with my project and yes it was as painful.

My time at ASU’s labs have been fun and frustrating but I am grateful for the experience.

- CJ Pimentel