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Week 1

My first week as an REU student was action packed and interesting! Lots of this week's activities involved getting to know my fellow students. This week, I got to spend time with them at Mellow Mushroom (a pizza place) and during meetings throughout the week. Furthermore, I feel that I was able to get to know them better during our trip to the Life Adventure Center on Friday (6/1/18). During this event, we took part in many fun team-building activities. Also, during lunch and the car rides there and back, I had some down time to talk with them about sports and what it is like where we live and go to college.

Aside from getting to meet my fellow REU participants, I got to meet some of my research advisors, lab mentors, and other members of the lab that I am working in. All of these people were friendly, encouraging, and receptive to any questions that I had. The time I spent in the lab this week either involved observing others to learn about different procedures or receiving training on some machines; I received training on a contact angle machine, got to prepare a few samples for zeta potential analysis, and got to watch others use a UV-Visible spectrophotometer as well as a total organic carbon analyzer.

Outside of the lab, I got to learn more about my objectives for the summer, which consist of creating cellulose and polyvinylidene fluoride membranes, attaching functional groups to them, observing their metal capture, and measuring their volume output with changing pressure. To observe metal capture, I will use the contact angle machine mentioned above as well as learn about using a scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. On another note, I got to learn a bit about graduate school by attending a graduate student panel and briefly talking with a graduate student. From these experiences, one surprising thing that I learned was that graduate students can arrange their schedule in many ways, as opposed to others who have careers with set working hours.

Overall, I am excited to further define my goals with the help of my advisors, learn more from other members of the lab that I am working in, and eventually begin running experiments.

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