Lunch break

I was talking to some friends from back home, and one of them asked me if I ever wished I had gone back to Texas for the summer instead of staying in Hanover and working. To be honest, there are definitely days (and sometimes weeks) where I've asked myself what I'm doing here, working 10+ hour days doing research, so far away from home during the summer after my freshman year. There are definitely moments when I wish desperately for a mall in the area, or a car, or some close friends (doesn't that make me sound vaguely pathetic?). Sometimes at night all I want is to be back in my room with air conditioning, or to be able to go downstairs and see a fridge full of leftovers instead of the nearly empty one in the kitchen here (if you get home at 7pm after hours of doing surgery, you won't feel like walking to the grocery store and lugging home gallons of milk and orange juice, either).

Luckily, I'm reminded constantly of how very lucky I am. Seriously. Yeah, it's a shame that I didn't spend the last few months shopping with friends and lazing about in the glorious air conditioning, but what did I get to do instead? Learn about something that truly excites me. Build electrodes. Perform brain surgeries (kind of) on rats. How awesome is that? I won't even get into how terribly unqualified I felt when I started, but I've now gotten the surgery to under 2.5 hours, and more importantly, none of my rats have died on the operating table.

Of course, the summer isn't over yet. It seems that each past weekend has been filled with one crisis or another major chore or project that needed to be taken care of, but I think I'm finally going to see some time opening up. There's still a chance I'll get around to reading those books I've put aside. My art supplies may be used at some point. I'll eventually take a serious look at potential majors and courses I want to take.

Right now, though, my lunch break is over, and there are surgeries to be done, and rats to be trained, and data to be collected.

Until next time.