This post is an essay that I wrote for my junior year of high school/freshman year of college English class. It’s a personal literacy essay where I discuss my experience with books. I hope you like it. Throughout my entire life, including now, people always recognize me by my hair. Curly, brown, and perpetually frizzy hair. My trademark. Although hair is important to who I am, I think books will forever be the biggest part of me. According to my mother, I started reading when I was 3, I can’t corroborate that since I don’t remember being 3. In fact, I don’t remember much of my childhood. But I remember the books I read. There were 3 extremely important books that have shaped my entire life, or at least my life until now, but I can almost guarantee that they will always be important to me. These books represent different types of reading, or different reasons you might read. The first type is reading for knowledge, represented by the Egyptology book. As a child I wa
Ok, I have a word limit for this so I'll just give you guys a bit of background info on what this is then I'll get into the post because this post is actually an assignment for the internship.
1. This is Fred Hutch
2. This is the internship I did
So I have a few favorite things from this internship, ranging from the scenery to the labs. (Mostly the labs) But the thing I loved the most, were the tours. Seeing the labs and meeting people who work there and what they do is fantastic.
This is from the first tour, a picture of the view from the sky bridge. Yes, a skybridge!
This is from a PCR lab. PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. It essentially makes a bunch of copies for a specific gene. Copies are made by putting DNA into a thermocycler. Changes in temperature can change the bonds of the DNA, for example, heat breaks the hydrogen bonds, cold binds primers, and warm copies DNA using TAQ polymerase. #science
We took the DNA copies and put them in a microtube with some dye that would make the DNA glow under a blacklight if there was DNA in it, and we also added a negative control to another microtube so we had something to compare it with. The microtube with the DNA is on the right, and it has this orange glow. I was so proud of this because it felt like I had made my own little baby DNA. My children are in a little microtube.
Another thing that really made an impression, was meeting Dr. Fauci. Yes, that happened I promise I was just too intimidated to get my own picture, but there will probably be a group picture on the Fred Hutch website. It wasn't really the fact that I met him that made an impression, but the fact that I was there. I was a midwest girl, with an immigrant family, and humble background, in a big city, at a huge, international cancer research center, sitting like 3 feet away from the Chief Medical Advisor to the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!! That's what really made me say, "Man snap out of it. Hundreds of people applied for this and YOU got in. YOU are sitting in a room with Dr. Fauci. Not luck, not pity, not a need for diversity, YOU DID THIS."
Anyways, I had the time of my life and I don't want to end this on such a serious note, so here's a cute bunny I saw out of a window there.
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