Big Blog Challenge

Interview someone else's professor or a graduate student who you do not work with. Get them to tell you their story. Ask questions like....

How did they arrive at Duquesne University?

Did they always want to be a chemist?

What do they like most about their job?

What are some of their regrets and missteps?

What would they do differently?

Creative questioning is preferred.

Summarize your conversation on the blog. Pictures and video are worth bonus, but there must be written content too. This blog has a high value reward.

The past week

This blog post is a little overdue and I have a lot to cover so lets begin.

Lets start with last weeks field trip to Bayer Materials Science. With a trip to another corporate chemical firm, comes another very informative look into the world of what is the business of chemistry. However Bayer differed from our last corporate trip in a few ways. What we saw at Bayer was the development of things that can, and will directly impact the lives of each and every one of us. From bowling balls, to particle board, to the material that is used in the dashboards of cars Bayer is working to manufacture products that will better the lives of many. Now a word about the people that we encountered on our trip. We began the day meeting some fellow Seed students who were conducting their research at Bayer, as well as their coordinator. We then moved on to meet some of the college students who were also doing research at the company, they were also very informative. We had a series of different tour guides and presenters along the way who were very knowledgeable and could answer any of the questions that we may have had. Overall the Bayer trip was a good one and I now have an understanding of the important R & D that goes on there.

Next I'll move on to the research symposium, and i must say it was the apex of the entire experience. Having the opportunity to present my summer research to interested patrons was a good experience. Also the speakers in the morning portion of the symposium were good. Once again we got to meet some fellow students who had come from West Virginia University to present their research.

The final thing that I have to talk about is the alumni lunch, which happened yesterday afternoon. We had the opportunity to hear of some of the life experiences, as well as get some advice from former SEED students.

So a lot has happened since my last blog post, and the above summarizes it all

The Return of the Alumni

Yesterday the Project SEED alumni (that could make it) came back to visit, eat pizza, and share their college student wisdom with us. Tim McFadden, Dawnee Sloan, Chrysten Pfabe, Tristan Stagger, Chris Sidun, Amanda Anderson and Sydney Burkholder and Mary Krawzack all came to visit. I feel like this year's reunion went a lot better than last years.

They had some really good advice about preparation for college and what to do once we got there. Talking to them eased some of my fears. I'm still a little tentative about the schools I want to apply to and how much everything's going to cost...It's all going to cost quite a lot. And while cost is something that needs to be considered when applying, I think it should be considered after I look at what the schools will offer me if I go there and after I see what scholarships I can get. For now I'm just going to focus on getting accepted! I'll start looking at scholarships too. I'm excited! I can't wait to just finish school and go to college, but at the same

Almost finished !

The research symposium was last Friday and it was a lot of fun. To see my panels in spot number 40 was a sigh of relief. I felt so accomplished and felt like I did so much to make my research the best it could be. I had 6 or 7 visitors visit me to talk about my research. A lot of people to visit for my first year in project seed right? And Im only junior in high school . I was very shocked. I only thought I would get only about 2 or 3 people, but when i saw people approach me I was very excited to talk about my research. I also visited a person from Washington and Jefferson College which we visited about 2 weeks ago. She shared a lot of information anout her research with me. She also told me a little bit about the college because I am thinking about applying there for college in chemistry. But i still have time to decide. Then it was time for me to leave and return to band camp for my performance. I wish I could of visited more people about there research.

Yesterday was the Project SEED alumni lunch. The alumni were very nice and gave a lot of pointers to get me started into a successful college life out of high school. It was really interesting to see people from Sto-Rox and see how far they have gotten out of a low income school. After hearing a former Sto-Rox graduate, Tim McFadden's story I feel like I could be a very successful person and not hold back at all coming from such a poor and small school.

After today there is only about a week left of Project SEED. Boy does time fly! The last thing to do is write my research paper and then I'm all finished! Even though this program was so much fun I just can't wait until it's over. I want to sleep in, waking up early is so much work.

Symposium and the alumni lunch!

The symposium was actually my favorite part of the whole summer! Knowing that the big rush of trying to get everything done was finally over made me happy. Only about three people came to actually talk to me about my poster and my grandpa recorded it. Maybe I could share it on here with you guys.

We are now down to the last two weeks of Project SEED they're going to be pretty easy hopefully. I'm very happy I did this program this year it was a great experience to work with new things, I loved it! Hopefully, I can come back next year. Last but not least, today we had lunch with the alumni of project seed from previous years. It was very nice to share what we are doing this summer with the others. It was also nice for them to share what they're doing now with their life, sounds like their becoming successful and I know Project SEED helped make that happen.

Apex of our year

So much has happened since my last blog I don't even feel like doing this.

<-----END TRANSMISSION----->


Yeah I wish. Last Friday was the main event for the year, the big shebang. Our research symposium was a huge success. There was a few keynote speakers to lead off the event, people had to give their dissertations. You could tell that they were good by the fact that I saw no one sleeping. I mean, it was 9:30 and it was a room full of college students. After that came the best part of the day....I mean lunch. This was when we got to socialize with even more SEED students, these ones hailing from WVU. It was good to talk to them and learn about their projects. I was so happy that it pretty much negated my anger from my ice cream prematurely melting. Almost.....I was really looking forward to that.

Anyways, after lunch came the poster session. It was pretty amazing to see the varying kind of research that had been done. It went from analyzing characters in Russian fairytales to molecular dynamic simulations of the norepinephrine and serotonin transporters in a lipid bilayer membrane. Can you guess which one I understood?

Once it was my turn to present my poster my nerves were at an all time high. With my luck I'd get Stephen Hawking asking me to explain my poster. However, once my first visitors came, I found that I was readily prepared and even managed to slip in a smooth wink.

After the session was over, I realized that this might be the last time I get to see my group, so we didn't pass up the oppurtunity for some amazing photo ops.



After the dust settled from the symposium, we had the Project SEED alumni lunch. I was very anxious to meet some of my predesscesors. I thought they were going to be very stuck up and judgemental. I also thought the Steelers were going to win the Superbowl. Turns out I was wrong on both counts! Everyone was extremely friendly, and very eager to share their experiences and wisdom with us. There were even a few fellow Sto-Rox students who were in college. It is nice to be reminded evry now and then that you shouldn't let where you come from hinder you. Tim McFadden is just starting his PH.D program, and Chris Siden is in his third year of Duquesne's pharmacy program. If they could go on to do great things like that, who's to say I can't?

So that's about it, the last few days in a nutshell. SEED is almost over now and it is weird to think that I'll actually be able to sleep in soon. That is until school starts, at least.

These last two weeks....

There's always a lot to do. There's the pressure to finish everything before the summer is over (and of course for Denver), but everyone's also really excited to be done and have one week off before school starts.
I have to present again on Thursday, but I haven't had time to gather more results since I've been away at band camp. Last week was really crazy I heard though. But my days pretty much consisted of meals and practicing. Then on Friday I came back for the symposium. We sat in on some speakers, some of them we're really interesting. There was one girl who's project was about pandemics. She was trying to see if there was a way to predict the rise of diseases by looking at the thermometer sales, doctor visits and medicine sales. When I was talking to her about it afterwards though she said it was hard to make models to predict future pandemics when the models for the past weren't informative and it was hard to know how accurate the information was.
There was another person who did a project on the the pressure that's put on bovine heart valves when they're pregnant. The valves in the heart realign themselves while the cow is pregnant in order to compensate for all the pressure and blood.

After all the speakers were done we had lunch with our families, grad students and professors. Other Project SEED kids came from West Virginia to present at our symposium too. I didn't get a chance to go to their posters, but I presented to one of the girls and their mentor.
I feel like this year at SEED I did a lot better at the symposium. More people came to my poster and while I explained it to them, I feel like the language was more fluent.
After my hour was over I walked around to look at the other posters. I talked to the girl who did the pandemic project and then to a few posters that were about physics. There was one grad student from Pitt that was trying to finish filling in the Standard Model of Elementary Particles, specifically with Quarks. Physics is something that I've been thinking about majoring in and it seems like a good choice based on what she said. It's a major where women are a minority...so I hope that means I'll have good opportunities in it.