Hello World,

The date is 06/10/2024 marking the beginning of Week 3. Last week, I was able to get my SEA training scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday so I am looking forward to that. My goal by the end of this week is to get some level of familiarity in the lab.

Monday 06/10:  Today was very similar to my other days. After I got off the shuttle, I went to my cubicle and began researching my topic more in preparation for the upcoming training. For lunch, I went to the servery where I got a variety of food and was later joined by Mahmoud. We both conversed about our different projects and other aspects of academia. Back to the cubicle, I continued my research. Although my current hours are not up to 8 hours, I’ve become more used to working 8 hours at a desk compared to when I first began. It doesn’t seem as daunting anymore and as I start to work in the lab, I have a feeling that there may be days when I will have to go past 8 hours and I feel prepared for that.

Tuesday 06/11:  Starting off the day, I had the workshops. This session focused on inclusivity and diversity with many scenarios given to us so we can understand the concept. We then headed to GRB  212 where our second meeting took place. Here, we learned about Entrepreneurship, met Dr Carolyn Nichol, and got our second stipend from the program. After this, I headed to get lunch at the servery along with a few others. Since I had my training at 1pm, my mentor had asked to meet up by 12:45 so I left the servery a bit earlier to head back to my lab. Upon arrival to my lab, I received an email from the trainer that the training will have to be rescheduled to Thursday because some issues happened.  This bummed me out as I was looking forward to the training but I understand that things happen. I continued my daily routine of research on my computer and learned more about the Optical Tweezer, the machine I will be getting trained on tomorrow, Wednesday.

Wednesday 06/12: I had my Optical Tweezer training at 10am today. I left my cubicle at 9:45 am to give me extra time to find the location of the lab. The training went very smoothly. It made me feel prepared and excited for when I begin to conduct my experiments. The trainer, Subash, was very helpful and assured me he would be willing to help me if ever needed help with my experiments. We went ahead and scheduled our second training session for Tuesday of next week at 9:30 am so sadly I won’t be conducting any actual experiments this week. I do have my Rheometer training scheduled for Thursday 06/13 so that will give me a chance to get some hands-on experiments with the polymers. However, I was able to get some time in the lab today with my mentor by helping him with his experiment. I got the chance to use the pipettes to separate metal particles from diluted water. He also offered me the opportunity to help him out on Friday which I gladly took. I’m really looking forward to both the training and the lab time.

Thursday 06/13: Today’s the day, the day that I get my training done on the Rheometer. I started off the day by grabbing some quick breakfasts at good ol McDonalds and then I headed to my cubicle. I spent most of my time working on my presentation that I was going to present to my mentor on Friday. The content of the presentation was a summarization on two articles that I had received from my mentor earlier this week. For lunch, I stopped by the Rice Memorial Center and grab a quick snack and water. I then headed back to my cubicle to continue my readings. Around 1:40 pm, my mentor and I headed down to the Engineering building for our training.  The building looked very new and had that new building smell to it which I believe we all know and love (right?). The training lasted for approximately 2 and a half hours. It made me feel very prepared for the various experiments that I will be conducting.

Friday 06/14: I got to my cubicle around 9 am and began my daily routine but today, I got some time in the lab by helping my mentor with some materials. Around 9:45 am we went to the lab and continued our work on what we started on Wednesday. This was very fun and provided me some hands-on experience on what I will be doing in my own experiments. For lunch I reheated some food that I had brought from the servery yesterday. After lunch, I went back to my desk and finished up the presentation that I had to present for my mentor. Overall today was  very successful and the best day in comparison to the other days.

That’s a wrap for week III. I had a lot of progress this week in terms of getting hands-on experience in the lab. I was hoping to get all of my training done this week but things don’t always go the way we expect it to go. However, I am glad that I got to achieve my goal for this week, albeit not in the way I was expecting. And just like that, week III is over. I look forward to what week IV has in store for me. Until then.

Cheers,

Samuel Ogunsola