An Introduction to Hanover: A Seriously Amazing Town

Welcome to Hanover, New Hampshire: home of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School.
This wonderful place is where I'll be spending my summer. I've already been living here for nearly two weeks. I'm living in Mid-Mass, one of the oldest dorms on campus. It's not awful, but it's nothing as nice as what ONU has. It's similar in quality to Clark Hall, but we don't have communal bathrooms (thank God). Each room has its own bathroom. I've met some really interesting people here. Let me introduce them to you. N is my roommate. She's from Connecticut and goes to Keene State in New Hampshire. R lives in Ft. Lauderdale, but she was born in Venezuela. She's bilingual and I am super jealous. B is from Idaho and goes to school at San Jose State. She's ridiculous and makes us all laugh. AH is the last girl. She's from Minnesota and has both the Minnesotan and Wisconsin accents. She's super athletic and skates and water skis and everything. There are only four boys in the SURF program. A is a hardcore runner. He's really an interesting person....like personality-wise. He likes to be alone, which causes him to be on the receiving end of some grief from the girls. C is the oldest of us all. He's from New York somewhere and he's definitely different. M is the biggest goof of the group. He seems so serious all the time, but that's just why he's so funny. O is really funny. He's from Maryland and goes to UMES. He's always late for everything, but he takes great care with his appearance. AB is our activities coordinator for the summer. She's been planning all kinds of events to keep us busy. She is a recent Ph.D. from Dartmouth. She's married to a really funny guy named Aaron. They have the cutest dog. We went to their house for the 4th of July to see the fireworks. They have a very nice house and I really enjoyed getting to celebrate the holiday.
So those are my friends from the program. There are some really interesting people in the lab I work in. BC is my PI. She's really nice and is probably one of the most involved PIs in the program. I'm working a lot with D. She's the lab mom and has been working with me the first few days. R is really really nice. She worked with me on the 3rd, even though it was pretty much a holiday. S is French and his accent is totally to die for. There are a few other people in the lab: Y and Bo are Chinese, and I don't know everyone else's name. I'm having a great time though.

The SURF program has been sooooo good to us. The first night we were here they put us up in the Hanover Inn. It was super beautiful and I can't believe how wonderful it was. They've fed us a couple of times and we don't eat cheap. They took us to the Cape for a two day vacation. We toured a couple of research labs at the Marine Biological Laboratory. It was really interesting, but that's not my kind of biology. I'm a total lab nerd. Put me out in the field and I'd be doomed. We got to see the libraries at MBL. I got to see a signed first edition copy of Darwin's Origin of Species. That was super awesome!!! We also got to see a first edition copy of one of Newton's books. They had all kinds of really neat books. If we'd had time, I would have loved to just wander around. They took us to Martha's Vineyard one day. The ferry was really fun, but the best part was that we got to bike along the coast. The program paid for all of our bikes. They're really taking good care of us. We're having a journal club, which isn't super exciting. We're doing some papers and have to give a couple of presentations. The best thing that they're doing for us is providing a Kaplan GRE course, free of charge. It's a $1200 class, but we're paying nothing! It's totally fabulous. We even get to keep the materials and everything. I think I'll be taking the GRE in the middle of August and hopefully I'll do well. The second best thing we get to do is they're sending us to a conference thing: The Leadership Alliance National Symposium. We're all presenting posters and I think that'll be a *great* experience for all of us. I know I'll feel like I'm going to vomit or pee my pants because I'll be nervous, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.

Okay. My research. I'm not exactly sure I can explain it very well, but I'm going to try. I'm working with C. elegans, a nematode. C. elegans is a microscopic worm. Most individuals are hermaphroditic. Something like 0.1% of specimen are male naturally, but this number can be increased in the lab. The most interesting thing about C. elegans is that they have extremely predictable development. It's super ridiculously predictable, like the same cells divide at the same minute in different individuals. It's really cool. They're also transparent, so you can see each of the cells when you put them under the microscope. They have 1090 cells total, but 131 of these cells undergo apoptosis during development. My research is looking at these 4 cells known as the NSM cells and the NSM sister cells. The NSM mother cells divide to give rise to a large NSM cell and a small NSM sister cell. The NSM cells survive, but the NSM sister cells die. My PI has done a bunch of research to determine which genes are required for normal development of these cells. Right now, I'm looking at these strains that have been mutagenized to give rise to other phenotypes and such. The wildtype has only the two NSM cells. I have strains with only one gene mutation, and those have four cells: both the NSM cells and the NSM sister cells. Then I have a few strains with two mutations and I'm looking at specimen from those strains and scoring them, which essentially is me counting the number of cells. Some individuals will have 2 cells, some have 3 and some have 4. I get to mount a sample of worms in some NaN3 on a slide and put them under the scope. The DNA of the cells I am looking at has a fluorescent tag (go GFP!!!) so I can see the individual cells when using the GFP filter. It's really really awesome. I'm not entirely certain what I will be doing, but I'm learning. The reason this research is important is that it has medical implications. The ability to control programmed cell death will allow for treatments of diseases. There are diseases that are caused by too much cell death like Alzheimer's Disease, ALS, Parkinson's Disease and even AIDS, but there are also disease that involve too little cell death like certain cancers, and a variety of autoimmune disorders. So while my research might seem like it's not significant, one day this all could lead to cures for some of the diseases that plague our world. And there is nothing I want to do more than be a part of something much bigger than myself.

Let's see. What have I done since getting to New Hampshire.
I've eaten at some really great restaurants. The first night I was in Hanover we went to this place called Molly's. They have so many vegetarian choices. I wasn't sure what to get. I should have tried something random, but Iwasn't brave enough. Maybe I'll get a chance to go back sometime and get something new. I also went to this cute bakery place called Lou's. They had so much food and it didn't really cost all that much. Murphy's had excellent atmosphere. Some of the seats were like old church pews and the walls were covered with bookshelves. It was really disappointing to discover that most of the books were sawed in half because the shelves weren't deep enough for the books. So they're not readable, which is a total bummer.
We got to do this low ropes course for team building before work started. It wasn't really exciting, but it was at least something to do. Perhaps we'll get to go back and try the high ropes course. At least for the high ropes you have to wear a harness and stuff like that. We were terrible at working together. Everyone here is a Type A personality except for me. I'm totally okay with letting other people have the lead. I'm not exactly sure what kind of personality I am. I'd like to think a relatively nice blend of Type A and Type B. *shrug*
Most of the group went to see My Sister's Keeper. I enjoyed the movie, even though it was quite different from the book. I love Jodi Picoult. I've read everything she's written, I think. The ending of the movie kind of disappointed me, but from a theatrical perspective, I think I understand. I think the ending would have been more powerful if they'd done it the way the book did it, but the movie ending was still pretty powerful. I cried. I admit it, I really cried. But I was not the worst. There were people in the theater outright sobbing. R cried pretty hard too. The movie was so moving. I'm really glad I went to see it. Three of the guys (not A, surprise!) went to see it too and I think they were all glad that they went.
I've done some other travelling than to Cape Cod. I've gotten to go to Vermont a couple of times, which allows me to check off a third state from the list of state's I've not visited. We went hiking in Quechee Gorge today. It's known as the Grand Canyon of Vermont. It's not nearly as impressive as the Grand Canyon (or as I imagine the Grand Canyon to be) but it's really cool. We went swimming in the river and it was frigid. Only Chris was brave enough to go completely under the water. Seeing as I can't swim, I stayed in relatively shallow water. The deepest that it got was up to the middle of my ribs. I fell a couple of times because the rocks were sharp and slippery, but I managed to keep my head above the water and my glasses mostly dry. We took a picnic lunch down into the gorge and ate alongside the river. I had so much fun.

I love New Hampshire. I love Hanover. I love Dartmouth. I am seriously considering applying to the Medical School this upcoming year. I don't know how I'll survive the winters, but at this point, I think it might be worth it.