Surprise!

This week I had my internship interview. Even with it being referred to as an interview, for some reason, I was under the impression that it was to be an informal "chat" concerning the topics of our research work. I look backwards and have absolutely NO IDEA where I managed to get this notion. SUPRISE! It was an interview, complete with all the fun hypothetical questions designed to see how well you can organize and relay your thoughts off the cuff. Even given my unpreparedness, I felt pretty good about it.

Just for you Josh!

After finding out that I had been officially accepted as an intern (woo, woo), I set up my schedule for lab hours, and finally found out what I will be studying for my research project. I was a little surprised to find out that I would be identifying an unknown bacterium. I had expected to see something of a more broad scope. After talking with both Matt and Josh, this makes sense in that we are in the very odd situation of starting our projects halfway through the semester and it would be very difficult to obtain good strong results from a broader subject in the limited number of weeks ahead of us. Having gone through this process before, I look forward to sharpening my techniques in the microbiology department. My head is filled with thoughts of gram stains, mannitol fermentation broth, catalase, dichotomous keys...