Ry Gould Week 4

This week my lab received a shipment of new animals. We got 180 out bread (genetically diverse) rats. These rats will be run in similar experiments as have been preformed previously in the lab, but sense they are not in bread they will be useful for finding genetic markers that may be associated with addiction.

When the rats arrived we had to label all of their tails with numbers written in sharpie. We had six people and 180 rats so it only took a few hours to take care of that. This is good for identifying them, but the rats also need to get used to people handling them and this is perfect for that. We had to handle them the next day as well just to help them adjust more quickly. The older more experienced rats that I had seen and worked with before were much more easy to pick up and move around, but the brand new young guys were much more anxious. I only got bit one time, but that is till not too good because it has been the only time a rat has bitten me when the rat is not in withdrawal of some substance. It was really fun to deal with the new extra cute rats, and it is also exciting because it means that there will be more experiments that I can help run in the next couple of weeks. The rats in  my images are not rats that I worked with because it is against TSRI policy to take pictures of the animals.

Outside of the lab I haven’t been up to too much other than what I have already been doing, but I have been really enjoying cooking this week. In the morning both days this weekend I made ham and cheese omelets, and because I didn’t have any cereal or anybody to cook for me I learned a fun new skill. I also made pasta and meatballs one night this week. It was pretty interesting because I had never made home made meatballs, so I ended up with some pretty interestingly shaped ones. At home I work in a kitchen, but cooking more for myself has helped me learn a lot more diverse set of skills and really just become a better cook more quickly. In some ways working in a restaurant is the best place to learn to cook, but it is limiting to an extent because you are always making the same thing. More importantly it is also less applicable for your own life because you are not always making the types of things that you would normally make for yourself.

So far this experience has been great, and I have learned a lot of things about science and about life. These next two weeks will most likely go by very quickly, but I am going to cherish them as much as I can.