Rough Start

Hello everyone! I'm Melissa Fowkes, a soon to be junior at Sto-Rox High School. This is my first year in the Project SEED program and I feel so privileged to be able to work in Duquesne University's chemistry and biochemistry department. I hope to accomplish a lot over these next eight weeks, but first I need to get a better understanding of what it is I'm doing now.
The project that I am going to be researching and conducting over the next few months is titled "Predicting the Structures of Peptides in Water form Calculated Vibrational Frequencies". Whenever I started reading up on my topic and I started seeing Quantum Mechanics and equations with Greek lettering thrown in, my first thought was "What did I get myself into?!" I was and still am intimidated by everything but I am confident that I will get a grasp on the topic soon enough with help from my mentor, Dr. Wheeler, and Scott. My progress on my topic is off to a very slow start. So far, I've learned how to use GaussView 5.0 and basic commands in the Linux operating system. I'm still questioning a lot but chemistry, math, and I are tighter than three peas in a pod and I am fully confident that I will understand what is going on eventually. I'm ready to begin my research and eventually be able to participate in group meetings and even, if I'm lucky, understand what the Computational Chemists are talking about.