by Juan Morales & Tyler Bauman
Our current situation back on campus is less than ideal, due to the current pandemic everyone has to wear masks and social distance while in the lab. It’s honestly nice that we have to socially distance as it allows a TA to fully help us with our protocol and they aren’t worried about multiple groups at once. Courtney, one of the TA’s has been unbelievably helpful for us and has allowed us to push ahead and get us working in the right direction.
However, even with Courtney’s help, there has been a large number of unforeseen problems with one of our miRNA’s. This RNA has given us so much trouble, it has caused low concentrations and other issues. The RNA loves to be terrible and just be barely good enough to get by at the same time. Due to pure luck when choosing a culture Tyler picked the only viable culture out of all of the samples. This let us keep moving forward past the other groups in our cohort. Unfortunately, the rest of our peers had no luck while growing their cultures, this severely set them back. Fortunately enough this problem was addressed and fixed.
Even though we have to deal with many restrictions and protocols, it’s been great being back on campus. It’s kind of annoying having mostly online classes, but having in class lab breaks it up and makes it almost feel like a true college experience. We both look forward to being in the lab and working with our TA makes these unusual times feel a little more normal. If it wasn’t for Courtney we would have messed up many protocols a long time ago. In other words, what we are saying is the pandemic is a blessing and a curse. Without it, we would not be as far as we are and we might be struggling. After being stuck at home for so long we’re happy to be back and doing our research.
