Daniel Kang
A Day in the Life of a First-Year: Winter Edition
With the winter term almost coming to an end, I wanted to share with everyone another "A Day in the Life" as my schedule and commitments changed slightly!
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM
Usually, this is when I wake up. This term, my earliest class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays is at 11:30 AM; on Tuesdays and Thursdays it's at 10:10 AM. However, I love to get some morning work and coffee into my schedule to feel energized—also to use my breakfast swipe at on-campus cafés!
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
I often choose between two options: Novack Café or Still North Café (off-campus, around 8-minutes away). Today, I chose to head to Still North, which has amazing window seats that offer a perfect amount of sunlight. However, those seats fill up quite fast, so I tend to arrive exactly when they open up. My go-to order is an iced vanilla latte with a prosciutto, egg, and jam breakfast sandwich! I had some microbiology literature reading and essay revisions to work on. Here, I tend to do work I can complete while listening to music; so, ones that don't require as much concentration.
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Since it was Monday, my class started exactly at 11:30, so after finishing what I had prepared for the morning, I headed back to my dorm. I relaxed on my bed, watching some YouTube videos, new episodes to my favorite Netflix series, and replying to some emails. Last week, I didn't exactly get the classes I wanted, so some professors replied back to me with potential options.
11:30 AM - 2:00 PM
Today, I had class back-to-back: my Ancient Medicine course then my Physics course.
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
At 3 is when I have my daily research work. Therefore, between 2 and 3, I tend to either work on some extra work at an on-campus study location or head back to my dorm to decompress. Today, I had to continue to organize my schedule and start working on my final paper, so I headed to Novack Café to grab some vitamin water and begin.
3:00 PM - 6:00 PM
As mentioned in previous blog posts, this term I began work as a microbiology research intern at the Geisel School of Medicine. My laboratory is located in Remsen, a research building next to the Life Sciences Center (LSC). It's about a 10-minute walk from Novack! Today, I had some PCR testing to do, which detects whether certain sections of genetic material are properly located/flipped. I also poured some "plates," which are places bacteria grows, as they're incubated in a machine set at around 26-27 celsius.
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
I grabbed a quick dinner at 53 Commons, or as Dartmouth students call it "FoCo," and headed to the library to finish more work!
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