Another Monday

It is already the second week of the Summer @ Brown program, and the third week of the Ivy League   Connection program. I am half way through the program.

Same as normal days, we three went to eat breakfast and go to the classroom. One thing different was we met one of our classmates, Coraly, on our way to the dining hall. She was from Puerto Rico. We talked about her life at Puerto Rico, and she said it was mostly beaches.

Jody focused on the discussion on the past two labs. First, she talked about the errors we made during the labs, and then the results. Brandon's result was used as the good example because his picture clearly showed the control sample and the other five treated samples. Good job Brandon!

Tomorrow we are starting a series of labs, including Competent Cell Preparation, Transformation with Unknown Plasmid, and lastly Plasmid Identification. From Jody's introduction, I did not fully understand. I hope I can gradually understand as I follow the procedures. She also showed us a TED video on gene therapy. In the video, the speaker, Nick Leschly, talked and showed an animation on a genetic disease called ALD. This kind of disease causes patients to have abnormal storage of lipid in their brain, and then causes death. Now, scientists and doctors develop a treatment, but there is still a lot of problems that they have to face in order to legalize the treatment, such as the government and money.

Arnold and I did laundry after lunch, and I went to a talk called "SparkNotes is Dead!" This session was talking about reading strategies in college.  He told us that the most important thing to do when reading a college text is to look for the thesis and then analyze the text. In order to emphasize his point, he told us to read a chapter called "Modesty, Gender, and Sexuality."  We then had a discussion, and I contributed my idea on how the author tried to present a conflict between social expectation an individual desire in women's heart in the society where men are the center of everything and women are inferior.

Continue with the topic on women, I went to another workshop called "Women in Media." We had discussion on modern U.S. media portrayal on women and also the inequality of women in the modern U.S. society. Women are often objectified, and are treated unequally in anywhere, including commercials, workplace, and even schools. The instructor, a current female Brown student majoring in chemistry, is still discriminated in the classroom. At the same time, she showed us several pictures that portrayed over-commercialized and photoshoped pictures. This society needs some changes.

The day ended with a gathering with our cluster. We ate ice cream birthday cake without a spoon or a fork, and that was not fun. Now I have to finish my reading for the DNA biotechnology class. Good Night!