Autumn 2022

Making new friends with my roommates, adjusting to apartment life, Christmas cards, starting ochem, learning what my project would be in the Fuller lab, being on the committee for Honors Peer Mentoring, joining Kinspire, Storytelling in the Sciences is definitely one of my favorites

Artifacts

In the spring I had agreed to live with Alden, Ethan, and Vinny. I knew Ethan from Hall Council and playing intramural soccer, but we were more friendly acquaintances than actual friends. Alden and Vinny I legitimately had talked to less than five times. I was worried that they would be buddies and that I would just be the other roommate but that was definitely not what happened. They included me on a trip to Chelan with their other friends Jasmine, Lali, Ankita, and Viru. I really got to know all of them pretty well over this trip, and I was excited for the year ahead. During the quarter we would watch movies High School Musical and the Interview as a big group, and since we all lived in the same apartment building it was like the dorms but better for me.

Probably the biggest adjustment I had when I started the quarter was making sure I fed myself properly. I no longer had the dining hall (well I mean it was still there but it wasn't worth spending money on) and I had to cook for myself. I had practiced cooking a little bit at home during the summer, but I was still pretty incompetent.

My mom had cooked food and then froze it and gave it to me, and I really enjoyed that for the first couple weeks. Eventually I started cooking simple things like dal chaval and aloo bhujia while learning how to use the instapot - this picture shows I still didn't know how long to set the timer to cook the dal!

One thing that motivated me this quarter was learning what project I would do for the Fuller Lab. I learned how to do ELISAs and had to make my own protocol, which was definitely intimidating. However, it really boosted my investment and learning since I had to become more confident asking questions in the lab and performing actual lab work. I only ended up doing one training ELISA in the quarter, but I prepared myself well for working on the Woodrow lab study!