And so it began
Hey everyone! My name is Ashley and I am a junior biology and philosophy double major here at the lovely Haverford College. I think that is all you really need to know about me because I’m just here to tell you about the important stuff – Biology superlab! I’ve been asked to blog about my experience this quarter in superlab, which is a lab course taken by upperclassmen biology majors (and chemistry majors planning to fulfill a biochemistry concentration). Biology superlab is designed so that students get first hand experience using techniques and equipment commonly used in graduate labs and research facilities; however, what really makes superlab special is the independence the professors give us. This independence, in my eyes, truly allows us to think about what we are doing, why we are doing it and how we would go about solving future problems/questions. What makes superlab special is that we aren’t just blindly following protocols, but actually learning how scientists think, how questions are formulated and answered thoroughly (that includes how to present our data, and most importantly, how to record our data =) ), and how fields of research progress step by step. In short, superlab is preparing us not only for senior research, but also for possible careers in research.
This particular quarter of superlab we are investigating the wild and wonderful local phyllosphere of our beautiful campus. As Jon has informed us, “microbes are everywhere, all of the time!” – and that includes on the plethora of leaves, buds, and flower pedals that decorate our campus. Honestly, I’m actually stunned by the amount of microbes that live on plant leaves – my mind literally has difficulty visualizing over 10 million bacteria inhabiting a square centimeter of leaf area (and we think NYC is crowded…). Naturally, in order to even begin our studies on the bacteria that live on plant leaves , we must venture out of the lab and into nature (no matter how humid and buggy) to survey the Haverford Campus. While each group is doing their own specific experiment, we are all essentially looking at the types of bacteria on different plant leaves; today, as a class we walked around campus and put the field methods to use (sort of); we surveyed everything from the magnolias, the weeping willows by the duckpond, those MASSIVE giant seqouias and dense walls of bamboo that line the nature trail (fun fact – despite many runs along the nature trail, I never noticed either the bamboo or giant sequoias…which is slightly embarassing) Sadly, I think my sad attempts to annotate everything I saw, smelt, (heard?), and touched turned to silly scribbles in my notebook that I really hope Jon and Iruka can read. I felt more like an artist examining something I wanted to draw and paint later than a scientist! (Monet must have had to made specific field maps for his series of paintings of lakes and ponds at different times of day). Actually, I take that back – I felt like Aristotle. Marking the specific location, examining the plant and determining whether it was a monocot, dicot, conifer, etc., and really making an effort to ‘get to know the plant’ in order to understand ‘its nature’ was pretty fun. Of course, we are taking Aristotle into the 21st century and doing even cooler stuff: examining an environment that are imperceptible to our senses. Ok, well, this blog post is really way too long for one blog post..so I’ll stop babbling on. I’ll let you all know how Thursday goes, when we actually collect our specimen!