Mentored Research

I know that I'm supposed to be putting up a Christmas list, and I know I'm almost the last one to do it, but I've been wanting to make this blog for a while. So I am working on a Christmas list, and it'll be up soon. But everyone has asked me on several occasions just what I do for this research that I'm doing. It's really as simple and boring as I make it sound, but people have a hard time believing this. So I went and took pictures of every step, just so you can see what little I do.

This is the lab/converted storage closet I work in. It's actually fairly clean on this day; and the day before they fixed the light. It used to only have one working light, which made it pretty creepy and more closet-like.

Step 1: I go over to the "box o' crap" as I like to call it, and pick out whichever bag I feel like. If you see that garbage can in the corner of the first picture, that is filled with bags that have already been ground. I'm pleased to say I did a lot of those.

Step 2: I empty out the bag that I picked. Inside are lunch bags filled with different plants. (Side note: those plastic bags tied to the side are filled with unknown plants [i.e. the researches need to find out what the plant is named before it can be ground]. I don't touch those)

Step 3: I organize those bags according to plant species and whether the plots are random or regular. As you can see, I have 6 different sections (3 plant species, each with two plot types)

Step 4: Now I label the the vials that the ground sample will go into. I write down the location, date, plant name, and the plots.

Step 5: I take one of the vials and the samples that go with it. I pull out an equal amount of plant sample from each of the lunch bags and place it on our fancy shmancy stolen Cougareat tray.

Step 6: This is the best part of the whole process. The actual grinding!

Step 7: Our finished product gets put into a ziploc bag and I clean the machine using a shop vacuum. Then I pick up the next bags and repeat, and when I finish with that, I pull out another bag from the box o' crap and the process continues!

That really is all I do. It's definitely one of the most mundane things I've been doing at college. However, on Saturday I get to be involved in dissecting a turkey in order to collect tissue and muscle samples, which is both disgusting and exciting. Now that you understand what I do for four hours of the week, it might be easier to see why I'm excited about something different, no matter how gross it is.