Hit the ground running...

Or more jogging in my case. I began working in the lab this week and so far so good. On Tuesday we had orientation with our program coordinator. We were given tours of the mass spec and NMR facilities and we were given a lecture on lab safety. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that they didn't present the well-known display "Mary didn't were her safety goggles...now she doesn't have to". I've always thought that one was a classic. One of my good friends suggested that I use that quote and draw an accompanying picture if I was ever at a total loss on a test. Luckily, I haven't had to pull that out of my bag of tricks just yet.

I started working in the lab on Wednesday. I say that I am traveling at a jogger's pace because as of know I am just familiarizing myself with some reading material. I am going to be doing a lot of work with a computer program called Linux this summer so I have spent the majority of my days reading over the manual and practicing the various command keys. This is certainly a new area of research for me and it is going to take some getting used to.

The drugs that we will be testing this summer have already been synthesized. My project will be focused on a compound called hibiscus acid. I am going to wait to stick my foot in my mouth and do some more research before I give you all more details about the compound. What I do know is that for one of the testing methods we will have to conduct an esterification reaction. Admittedly, my organic chemistry is a little rusty, but my understanding is I will be reacting the hibiscus acid with methanol in the presence of a catalyst like sulfuric acid. I think this is going to be my chance to make my goggles shine so I plan to make the most of it!

Other than that I will be working with the OCD, VCD, and ECD instruments. In all these acronyms CD stands for circular dichroism and the O stands for optical, V stands for vibrational, and E stands for electronic. Once again I need some more learning time before I explain all of these instruments to you, but what I do know is that one of them requires liquid nitrogen. Jarral, I wish you could see the size of the dewars (containers for liquid nitrogen) they have here. If I break one of those I will go down in Vanderbilt history! They will make a plaque that says "Emily Donahue-The Most Expensive Undergraduate We've Ever Employed". I am not sure that is the lasting mark I hope to make here.

Prasad, my mentor, is holding a chirality workshop on Monday-Wednesday next week that I will be attending. Once that is over, my jogging days will have ended. I am excited to dive in and start working on the project. I'll be sure to explain all the details once I figure them out myself.