CELLebraTEZ

Finally, after 4 months of living in St. Louis, I finally toured some of the popular spots in St. Louis. One of my best friends from Agnes Scott College came to visit me! Cecilia Alcala and I met our freshman year but became really close during our Jr. and Sr. Years at Agnes. Throughout the past couple of years, thanks to texting and facebook, we have been able to keep in touch and our friendship has grown! During my months of unemployment, Cecilia's friendship and support was extremely helpful and her positive attitude was always inspiring!  Cecilia's first visit to St. Louis was a great reason for me to go out and explore the city I live in! Thank goodness for the Great weather!  We started our day getting breakfast at a Stl gem, Strange Donuts. Two doors down was a place called, Pie, Oh My! While the plan was just to get a donut, we ended up going to Pie, oh my and got mini pies as well!! Oh boy were we ready to conquer our sugar filled breakfast!!  After...

At some point in my last entry I talked about my frustration with technology. It seems as though the technological malfunctioning has passed and I can go back to doing experiments and trusting my data. I have officially been working and collecting data for the past 4 months. I have tons of numbers that we call “data.” But they are just numbers! We put the animal in a tube, run it through a machine and the machine spits out numbers. Sometimes, I collect blood samples measure it with a Glucometer and I get numbers. I collect RNA run it through qPCR and I get numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers!! Everywhere there are numbers! At some point, you must ask yourself… what do these numbers mean? The process of sorting data is very tedious. It takes time, patience and perfection! Once you have these numbers sorted in an “organized” fashion, the next process is to UNDERSTAND what these numbers mean. In the understanding part of the data, numbers get “thrown out.” These numbers that magically...