Micro kicks boot-ay!

Today was my first real PE class, followed by my first Microbiology Lab. For PE I had to dress out in the standard NCSU PE uniform (red shorts and NCSU t-shirt)and then report to basketball court three for some fitness pre-testing. The end result was that I have now confirmed how out of shape I already knew I was. And I had to walk around campus in shorts, a very new and hopefully singular experience.

After that, I had to get ready for my first Microbiology lab, which had me very intimidated from the get-go. I didn't recognize the TA's name, and I didn't think that I could pronounce it, which normally means that it's foreign person with a limited English vocabulary. And then I looked at everything we had to do today which seemed like a heck of a lot for a first day. When I arrived, I found that the room was this nasty 70's yellow with brown specks cave, with no windows and a ton of old equipment stuffed in there. I sat down in an uncomfortable high chair and faced all of the equipment I would be working with, a solas, that day. I recognized the Petri dishes, the test tubes, and the sealed cotton swab, but what intimidated me the most was the un-lit Bunsen burner directly facing me. Yes, Jessica is afraid of Bunsen burners. Jessica is afraid of fires fueled by natural gases. Jessica is not going to refer to herself in third person anymore. My first introduction to a Bunsen burner was in the 10th grade with the most frightening Chemistry teacher I've ever seen. He would tell us traumatic and dramatic stories about the dangers of Bunsen burners, and then he'd tell us to light ours, which I would manage to do ten minutes later after my hands stopped shaking. Bottom line: I felt small and intimidated.

But that all changed. I learned that my TA was this semi-cute microbiology graduate student from - get this - Puerto Rico! He had that sexy Puerto Rican accent and gorgeous hair. And he was really nice and patient. He told us all about the safety issues and then we commenced the actual activity - learning aseptic technique. We had to pour molten agar into four Petri dishes, set those aside, perform T steaks of e.coli, something else, and then a mixture of both, perform broth cultures with inoculating loops and more e.coli, and then take the four Petri dishes and choose various things to swab them with from around the room. I think I did excellently, but I'll wait to commit to that until after I see my cultures. And the best part was that I overcame (for the most part) my own personal fear of lighting a Bunsen burner. That's not to say that I didn't covertly edge away from every person who turned on the gas valve and then waited forever and a day to light their burners. Actually, the best part is that I felt confident in that lab; I felt like I knew what I was doing and I had fun. Microbiology lab kicks butt!