It’s been a very busy start to school thus far.

We’ve all been in and out of lab at different times, so it’s been different not seeing the lab as busy and lively as it was during the summer. Nevertheless, we are all getting things done at our own pace!

For the most of the week, Michelle, Jake, and I have been focused on working on our posters for Parents Weekend. It’s amazing how fast time has gone by! I can’t wait to see how others will respond to our research during the poster presentation.

Even though we’ve all been working hard on our posters, we’ve managed to get some lab work done. Jake has been trying to find the bridge between nrfs, Ahr, and antioxidant response. Michelle has worked on dosing with diquat, and she hopes to image some fish after it has been dosed. I have dosed some embryos with MEHP and frozen them at 24 hpf and 36 hpf. I hope to find the window of sensitivity because we may have missed the window at 96 hpf, which was the time point at which I had previously ran qPCR for gene expression.

At this point in the semester, I feel like I have finally gotten the swing of things. Balancing out thesis work, class/schoolwork, and extracurricular activities has not been an easy task. However, I’m excited to see what’s in store for all of us as the semester progresses!