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Friday, August 8, 2014

Last Day :)

      Today, all I did was fix more things in my paper and have it rechecked again.  These past 8 weeks have not been what I expected at all.  I didn't think it was going to be fun or that I was going to make new friends.  All I had in my mind of working here was doing a lot of work in the labs and writing a lot of lab reports.  I am happy that I had the chance to be a part of project SEED and to work with the Gawalt lab.  They were so nice and helpful and I'm glad that they were a part of my lab experience.  The project that I worked on this summer was a fun topic.   It required me to work with cobalt and octadecylphosphonic acid.  It might seem hard, but it was really easy.  Anyways, I had a lot of fun this summer and I hope to be back again next year.  I will definitely miss everyone that I met and will always remember this summer!

Final Day

I apologize I haven't blogged in a while. I've been extremely busy lately.
I've been working on my research paper over the course of the week and I'm finished now. It took a lot of hard work and thought put into it. On Tuesday, we went to Bayer and I had a lot of fun. I learned that they make car parts, plastics, etc. I found that to be interesting. I would love to visit there again to see more about how the machines work. We had to present our posters once again. I was a little nervous at first. A lot of people came up to talk to me, but I liked explaining my project to others.

   On Wednesday, we had an admissions meeting. I showed up a little late, but it was very beneficial. I really am thinking about going to college here at Duquesne. I am definitely going to apply.

    I've had an awesome summer. I never thought I would meet such wonderful people. I never thought I would learn so much in such a short amount of time. I will cherish all of the memories I have made here. I am really sad that this is the last day...no more waking up early! but I really will miss everyone so much. It won't be the same without everyone! This has been the best summer by far. I am so proud of myself for coming so far. Juggling this, Kennywood, living with my cousin, and other things, I am so glad I have been able to adjust to everything and deal with it all. It really was a stressful, busy summer, but I accomplished more than I could ever imagine and I couldn't be more proud of myself.

"I will not say I failed 1000 times, I will say that I discovered 1000 ways that can cause failure" -Thomas Edison

GOODBYE PROJECT SEED! IT HAS BEEN AN HONOR, I LOVE YOU ALL! :)

Thursday, August 7, 2014

8/7/14 Kelly Pesta

Well today was a pretty good day. I finally finished my poster and my paper. I went down to the print shop today and I'll be getting my poster tomorrow. I'm pretty excited to see the final results on a big poster instead of a little screen and because that means it's closer to San Fransisco. Tomorrow I plan on getting my paper signed by Dr. Wetzel so I'm completely finished. There's only one more day of SEED. I'll definitely miss everyone here and all the new friends I met. Hopefully we keep in touch and in the future we'll all meet again.
To end with a quote:
"Don't be sad because you're saying goodbye, you should be happy because you have memories with them that you'll cherish forever."
     -Unknown

August 7, Summary

     The error for my calculation for para-fluorobenzamidine was finally resolve by rerunning step 6.  Instead of getting Nan again, I actually got number for my results.  So I spent the rest of the day editing my poster, presentation, and research paper because I can now mention my final result for para-fluorobenzamidne in GSBP and can say it does support my hypothesis: Para-fluorobenzamidine binds better than benzamidine to the trypsin complex.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Summary August 6, 2014

I am so close to finishing my paper. I have like two things to change and then I can send it to Dr. Wheeler to be approved. 

Today we met with the office of admissions and financial aid. I think Amber and I were the only ones who asked the important questions considering we are seniors and already have a pretty good idea of what we want to do and where we want to go. Not all of my questions were answered due to the fact that I didn't ask them, so I have set up a meeting with Philip on Friday. He's going to answer the questions I have about applying to Duquesne, the major that I want to study, and possibly what I can do with a minor in music therapy. I also have a campus tour set up on Friday at 1! Phil went ahead and made the meeting for me since I had mentioned something about touring while we were in the meeting earlier. It was so nice of him. 

Until tomorrow, SEED!

8/6/14 Kelly Pesta

Today had to be the most frustrating day ever!! This morning we had an admissions meeting that went well. After that we went to lunch. I left lunch early because I had to get stuff done with my research. I went down to the SEM and took down the last two data tables and wrote some more stuff down that Leah had me do. I was running out of time when I was still writing stuff down so I had to work as fast as I could. When I finished I came back up to the lab to make extractions so we can put them into the LC/MS, but couldn't go in because the floor was waxed. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do now. I guess I'm not going to be able to add anything else to my poster because what I was doing won't even be done.

8-6-14 Summary

        Today, all I basically did was get my paper back from my secondary mentor and change everything that I had to change.  There was way more things that I had to change than I thought I would.  After I changed everything, I then sent it to my mentor so she can sign it off. 

8/5/14-8/6/14 summary Cheyeanne Perez

           Yesterday I revised my paper again and I did it again and sent it back to my mentor for any other changes he thinks I should make. I am practically finished though.

August 6, Summary

      I edited my research paper after the admission meeting we had for the SEED students and then I sent it to my mentor.

I'm a little behind on blog summaries..

I haven't posted a blog summary in a while. The only things i've been working on since the last summary are my ACS poster and my paper. I am almost completely finished with the paper but my poster need a lot of work. It needs to be finished before noon tomorrow so I am most definitely going to be working on it tonight and tomorrow morning.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

August 5, Summary

     Today we went to the Bayer Materials Science where we presented our poster just like the symposium.   I stood there for an hour explaining my project and I met some people that already knew teachers from my school which was neat.  I even met my college administrator from my high school.  I had a lot of fun and the tour was very informative.  After we got back I just edited my research paper.

8/4/14 and 8/5/14 Katie O'Kelley

Yestersday, I worked on my paper and got really frustrated with it. Today, we went to Bayer. I did really well. I got nervous again though. Not as nervous, but nervous all the same. I did good though... I assume. I talked to a lot more people than  at the symposium too so that was good. Not all the people asked about my poster. Some asked me how I liked SEED and working at Duquesne. I also got asked about my future plans such as colleges and majors and that scary stuff. Then when we gto back I worked on my paper and sent it to my mentor. This paper is really frustrating. I never had this kind of frustration before in science. Only those papers you have to write in English class that have to be creative or like poems give me this kind of frustrated feeling. So that's new. I just walked it off and ate a lot of M&M's and listened to music.

Symposium

The symposium was a great experience for me, even though only one person I didn't know asked me about my poster. I was very nervous and as the day went on it got worse. I got shaky and started stuttering. My family saw my poster first. They got me through all the stuttering and were pacent with me when I kept messing things up. Next my lab came down one by one. Sara was first, I'm glad. She just quizzed me like before my presentations and helped me remember everything I was too nervous to remember.Then Mr. Larry, to take pictures. Then Dr. Basu came and saw me. He said he was very impressed with everything I've done so far. He asked a few questions too. Then the rest of my lab came and wished me good luck. They were all really supportive and helpful and I'm thankful for that. Only one person I didn't know came and asked me questions and they weren't difficult at all. Overall I have to say that the symposium went well. :) 

8-5-14 Summary

        Today, we went on a field trip to Bayer.  I learned many things that I didn't know throughout the tour that we had.  I also had to present, which wasn't that bad since there wasn't as many peoples there as there was at the Symposium.  After coming back to Duquesne, I worked on my paper and finished. I sent it to my secondary mentor so she can change anything on it so it can be better. 

August 4, Summary

     I tidied up my presentation just in case anyone needed to see it so it would be up to date.

8/5/14 Kelly Pesta

Today was a fun day. We went on a field trip to the Bayer Corporation and was able to present our posters to them and also take a tour of Bayer and see what they do. When the poster sessions began I was nervous because I knew that there were some pretty important people there, but as the sessions went on I calmed down and I actually enjoyed it more then the symposium. I felt very relaxed and everyone was very friendly. I really enjoyed the tour not only seeing what Bayer does, but also understanding some of the things Bayer did because of my project. We also got some free things from Bayer which was pretty exciting. When we came back I worked on my paper/poster and continued getting data. Tomorrow I plan on getting the last of my data from the SEM, gathering all the stubs, extracting them in the extraction method that had the best percent recovery, then running the samples through the LC/MS by the afternoon, getting results, and finish up my poster/paper by Thursday morning to my poster is finished at the print shop by Friday.

8/4/14 Kelly Pesta

Yesterday was a busy and frustrating day for me. In the morning I went down to the SEM to look at my data from my samples that Leah ran over the weekend, but the program froze on me when I tried to look at my data so I had to wait for Leah to come at 1:30 to restart the program. After she restarted the program I was then able to take down the data from the 3 samples she ran for me (revolver 2, revolver 3, and automatic 1). I wasn't able to put on a new stub yesterday after I got all my data because I ran out of time, so Leah ran one for me last night and she is going to run my last one tonight. I'm going to get the last of my data from the SEM tomorrow morning and make my extractions to run on the LC/MS and then finish my paper and poster by Thursday.

8/4/14 summary Cheyeanne Perez

Yesterday I emailed my mentor about my paper, that was basically all I really focused on.

Monday, August 4, 2014

8-4-14 Summary

        Last week, I wasn't here because I was at band camp.  Today, I got more done than i thought i would.  I started my paper that is due on Friday. With working all day and taking breaks to walk around, I got done with 8 pages of my paper.  That's all I really did today but working on my paper gave me a headache. 

Symposium Experience - Stephen Lau

     I had a great time at the symposium.  It felt like a time where everyone go finally enjoy their day and be proud on what they did so far for their project and that is exactly how I felt that day.  After everything everybody did this whole summer,  we just went to each other's posters act ask questions about our project.  I went to all the other SEED students poster who were't in my shift and ask them a few things about their poster.  It was fun to see whether if they knew everything about their project because they would either knew what they were saying and blew my mind away, or they would stutter and think what they were doing.
     However when it was my shift to stand by my poster, didn't really get many people to come by and ask me questions about my poster.  They were mostly looking at the poster next to mine, the one with a picture of a pretty girl.  It was mostly about ways to decrease the size of pictures and different methods on how to achieve that goal.  How do I know all this you may ask?  Well I also ask the people around questions about what they have done and they also asked about my work as well.  Besides the two undergraduates students around my poster, only two other people came to my poster, Robert and Kelly's cousin, who was force to come (my mentor promised to bring someone and have them asked a lot of questions to see if I knew what I was doing).  I was nervous every time someone came by though, because I wan't sure if I could answer' everyone's questions.  Luckily, every person that came by to checked on my poster usually got confuse after I explained what I did for my project, but I did try my best in describing my work in simpler terms.
     Even though it was a great day for us to share our hard work with people, it was also saddening to know that it was the last day for the undergraduates.  I personally don't like saying goodbyes because you know that there's a slim chance in seeing them again.  I was going to miss everyone especially the undergraduates in my lab group.  I became good friends with everyone in the Madura Lab and didn't feel like an outsider to them at all.  They always helped me out in anyway I can even if it was simple problem like using an iMac. I know I can be annoying with all my silly and absurd questions, but they didn't hesitate one bit when I had any trouble.  Knowing that it would be my last time seeing them was difficult for me, but when I think about it, if I have never applied for Project SEED, then I would have never met any of these wonderful people and the same goes for everyone else I've met so far.  I had a great time and the symposium was like a farewell party with a celebration for our hard work.  It felt like a time where you could be ecstatic yet you would also feel some sort of emptiness because you know that everyone is was going leave after that day.  It's a shame but I guess all good things must come to an end.

all last week summary Cheyeanne Perez

   I didnt really blog at all last week because the whole time I was trying to write my research paper. Its finally done though!!!!!!!!!!!!! But my mentor has yet to email me back about any corrections but I plan on trying to have it finalized by Wednesday!

symposium

It was a great experience , and I had a lot of fun. I would love to do it again. I had about 10-12 at my poster and it had gotten easier to explain after the first 3 people.

Friday, August 1, 2014

August 1, Summary

     I finally finish my research paper!  It took me forever but know I don't have to worry about the weekends.  I still have to wait for my other calculations so I may have to update the paper if it finishes any time soon.
                                                                                                  -Good night everyone.

8/1/14 Kelly Pesta

This morning was slow. I didn't do much because I didn't have my flash drive since we had to use it to save my data from the SEM last night. After lunch Leah came in and she showed me how to look at my data so I can do it on my own. I wrote down all the data from my results. After that she showed me how to restart the computers after the samples are finished running. Then I ran my next stub on the SEM. Leah is going to run 2 more this weekend. So Monday I will copy the data from the stubs and load the next one on. Hopefully we'll be done running my samples Wednesday, extract, put them through the LC/MS, and get results. I'll add the results Wednesday night- Thursday morning, have my mentor revise it within those days and have my poster finished by Thursday so I'm ready for San Fran.

July 31, Summary

     I worked on a lot for my research paper.  I only got my introduction and background down, but together they take about  six pages.  Still got the rest to finish. Hope it's still not too late to finish by the end of this week.