Class of 2014: Freshman Blog

Last night was the first time I had ever woken up in Washington D.C. and not known why I was there. Wait, wait! It’s not what you think! Let me explain…

I spent all summer at Hopkins taking classes and working at a lab downtown at the School of Medicine. By the time August rolled around, I hadn’t really been home for about eight months, so as soon as I was done with my second set of summer finals (I know…summer finals…yuck), I hopped a plane back to Houston. The next ten days were a whirlwind of friends and family. My last full day there was spent on the beach (the sandy one in Galveston, not the grassy one at Hopkins!), playing soccer in the sand and Frisbee in the 89°F water. But the time came to leave home and go back Home(wood), so I got on another plane…destination, Baltimore…

When I got off the plane at BWI, everything seemed fine. I went to baggage claim and got my stuff. I headed out the doors and followed the signs to the left, where a bus that said “AMTRAK/MARC” pulled up and took me to the BWI train station. This is where my misadventure began.

I walked into the station and asked when the next MARC train heading to Penn Station would be taking on passengers (the MARC train is preferable to Amtrak only because it costs like four dollars to get to Penn from BWI, compared to the Amtrak which costs around twenty dollars). He replied that it would be about an hour. I was tired from a long day of travel, so, having no interest in waiting that long, I tearfully parted ways with my twenty-dollar bill. He handed me a ticket. This train was arriving in five minutes. HINT: My first clue should have been the ticket.

My second clue should have been that he told me to cross the bridge to the southbound side of the tracks. But I wasn’t paying attention, because I was exhausted and I just wanted to get back to school.

The train arrived and I, a little suspicious of my whereabouts, asked the conductor if this train was heading to Penn Station. “Yeah,” he said curtly. I persisted, “Penn Station…in Baltimore, right?” “Uh-huh.” Satisfied, I got onboard and lay down across two seats. Before I knew it I was asleep. I woke up to the sound of the conductors voice over a speaker in my car. “…(unintelligible)…Wash…(unintelligible)…D.C.!” I bolted awake. “WHAT???”, I shouted, causing the girl and her mother (who were wearing matching Georgetown hoodies) in the seats directly in front of me to jump halfway to the ceiling.

I disembarked, and found myself in what was unmistakably Union Station in Washington D.C.

I looked at my ticket, lo and behold it said: “TO–WASHINGTON D.C. (UNION)”!

I felt so betrayed! I had been misled to believe that I was going back to Homewood, and there I was walking behind two Hoyas in the nation’s capitol.

I began telling my story to everyone wearing an Amtrak uniform. Luckily, Amtrak’s headquarters is at Union Station, and my story reached the ears of a corporate higher-up who took pity on me. Turns out, he’s a Hopkins alum who now works for Amtrak and teaches Marketing classes at the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business. A train to Baltimore was just leaving, and he was supposed to be on it as well. He spoke to the conductor for this train and got me on for free! I thanked him and we parted ways–him (I can only imagine) to the super-fancy-special-private car for Amtrak executives, and me to Coach.

Finally back at Penn Station, I walked outside just as the JHMI shuttle was rolling up. I got on and it dropped me off at Charles Commons.

So I guess there are a few morals to this story…

First: Check your ticket. Do it right now.
Second: B’More is NORTH of BWI; D.C. is SOUTH of BWI…if you’re on the SAME SIDE as the ticket office, the trains go NORTH.
Third: Hopkins alumni are friendly, helpful and EVERYWHERE.
Fourth: The JHMI Shuttle is your friend. It will never forsake you. Say thank you to the driver when you get off.

Stay classy, Johns Hopkins.

GO HOP!

“Game after game after game, I realize now what’s most important in my life: Hopkins Soccer. Show me something more thrilling than a perfect volley; tell me you’ve never dreamed of the immaculate strike and been part of that moment when Homewood Stadium holds its breath. Tell me that soccer is not our one common language, when the whole planet stops for ninety minutes to bear witness to that one thing we all understand…”

75 years ago, the first Johns Hopkins Men’s Soccer team took the field against all odds. Those men began a tradition of excellence that continues unadulterated to this day.

14 NCAA tournament appearances, 24 All-Americans, and 8 Centennial Conference championships in 10 years of membership.

In 2011, THE Johns Hopkins University Men’s Soccer team is poised on the precipice of greatness. Never in the storied history of this team have we been so close to a National Championship.

“…This game is ecstasy, anguish, joy and despair. It’s part of our history, part of our culture, and it will be part of our future. It’s theatre, art, war and love. It should be predictable, but never is. It’s a feeling that can’t be explained, but we spend our lives explaining it. It’s our religion. We do not apologize for it, and we do not deny it. This is our team, our family and our University…”

One month left. 31 days until it begins; the season we’ll all remember as THAT season, the one that changed everything.

This team knows what it’s like to fight and fight and come up short. There’s no overconfidence left, no extant hubris. We know that we’re better than good, and we have everything right in front of us. But we’ve had greatness within our grasp before, and were left grasping. Not this time. Not this year. This season, our great University’s 75th on the soccer pitch, marks the beginning of a new era of Johns Hopkins Soccer. Get ready.

(Click here to see video of what it’s like to be in the huddle: HOPKINS @ THE NCAAs: SWEET SIXTEEN PREGAME)

“…Yeah, you could tell me I’m wrong; some may say it’s just a game, but this is about heroes and tribes, loyalties and devotion; it’s our commitment and our passion, our battle and our belief; this is our faith. Now, feel the fever of the crowd, hear the roar of the faithful…This is the beautiful game. This is Johns Hopkins Soccer.“

2011-2012 HOME SCHEDULE

Date	Opponent / Event	Location	Time / Result
09/20/11	vs. York (PA)	Baltimore, MD	7:00 p.m. ET
09/23/11	vs. Muhlenberg	Baltimore, MD	7:00 p.m. ET
10/15/11	vs. Dickinson	Baltimore, MD	4:00 p.m. ET
10/18/11	vs. Neumann	Baltimore, MD	7:00 p.m. ET
10/25/11	vs. McDaniel College	Baltimore, MD	7:00 p.m. ET
10/28/11	vs. Washington (Md.)	Baltimore, MD	7:00 p.m. ET

Are you an aspiring Charles Village connoisseur? Get to know “Chillage”  hotspots with this guide to the restaurants of St Paul St (34^th to 31^st, the three blocks south of Wolman and McCoy Halls).

Tamber's

Tamber’s (3327 Saint Paul Street)
If Indian-American fusion sounds good to you, this is your place. Immensely popular, Tamber’s has a particularly devoted following amongst the inhabitants of Wolman and McCoy Halls. This is likely due to the fact that Tamber’s is a 30 second walk from the front door of both dorms, and that one can order via phone or online and walk over to pick it up at their leisure. If, during finals, someone orders from Tamber’s and can’t afford to break focus even just to walk over, they might pay you to go pick it up for them! It happens! Be sure to check out their Brunch specials…

Subway

Subway (3233 Saint Paul Street)
A staple of life at Homewood. Located at the intersection of 33^rd and St. Paul, Subway sits diagonally across from the JHU Barnes & Noble, so it’s a great place to get some food when studying in the café. My pick: Foot-long Ham and American Cheese on White Bread w/ lettuce, tomato, mayo, oil & vinegar and chipotle ranch. What’s really great is that you can get your Subway on 24 hours a day.

UniMini

UniMini (3201 Saint Paul Street #1)
However, when it comes to 24-hour eateries, nothing beats UniMini. The University Market is the spot for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as the obligatory 3am post-frivolity snack. My UniMini favorite: 10” Bacon, Egg and Cheese Hoagie and baklava. Plus, as the name suggests, it’s also a little grocery store! It has most of the basics, but you won’t find anything gormet at UniMini. Once, on one of those 3am visits, I saw a guy take the first bite of his UniMini hoagie and exclaim, “UniMini is my faith!!!” You can also get a killer ice cream smoothie.

Cold Stone Creamery (3201 Saint Paul Street #2)
Speaking of ice cream, Cold Stone is the place to be if you like to have the living hell beaten out of your frozen treats on a marble countertop. It always seemed a little cruel to me, but it just tastes so good! I’m a big Mint Chocolate Chip fan, so that’s what I get here. Oh, and a weird thing about this particular Cold Stone is that if you use a debit or credit card to pay, they ask for ID. I suppose it’s nice to know that if you lose track of your card, nobody will be able to buy Cold Stone in the Chillage with it.

Starbucks

Starbucks (3201 Saint Paul Street #3)
Now, I’m not a coffee kind of guy, but I don’t hate Starbucks. I don’t really go to this one, but I’m fairly certain that every Starbucks is the same. Something interesting: there is another Starbucks 100 yards away in B&N. I kid you not, in my hometown of Houston, there’s an intersection with a Starbucks on three of its four corners.  So two on one block isn’t that strange, right?

Chipotle (3201 Saint Paul Street #4)
Tortillas, fajitas, arroz, guacamole, pico de gallo! Chipotle is just about as good as you’ll ever find Mexican food north of Texas. The only two things I don’t love about Chipotle are that it is pretty expensive and that the line is almost always wrapped around the inside of the restaurant. Don’t get me wrong, they give you A LOT of food for your money, and it’s worth the wait.

Eddie's Market

Eddie’s Market (3117 Saint Paul Street)
Eddie’s is the grocery store closest to campus. It’s got everything you could ever need, and a deli in the back. The deli is famous for its sandwiches, none more so than its signature sub, the “Fabulous Smokin’ Jays”. We’re talking smoked turkey breast, mozzarella cheese, bacon, lettuce and tomato on a French roll. And then you can grab some eggs on the way out! One of the greatest things about Eddie’s is that if you present your J-Card at checkout, you get 10% off!

Freshii (3113 Saint Paul Street)
Freshii is this Canadian (Oh hayyy, President Daniels!) and surprisingly good health food restaurant located right next to Eddie’s. They primarily sell burritos, wraps, soups, salads and frozen yogurt, all made with organic everything. They compost all their waste just like the FFC, which is cool. I initially thought it would be weird, but it was actually pretty amazing. I get the Grilled Steak Burrito with no mushrooms. YUM.

Orient Express (3111 Saint Paul St)
This place is your generic, family-run, hole-in-the-wall Chinese food restaurant.  It’s great because it’s near enough to walk, but they also deliver. The “Learn More, See More, B’More” cast and crew ate there once! It was very exciting. My usual order is chicken fried rice. (Addendum: I owe this place some props, because on a few occasions I paid for my meal in quarters and they didn’t give me any dirty looks. I would have given me a dirty look. So, for the delicious food and their kindness, I gave them my Chinese food loyalty).

CVP

Charles Village Pub (3107 Saint Paul Street)
Perhaps the most iconic Charles Village locale, CVP has been around since the beginning of time. No, but seriously it’s been around for years and years, and makes a mean bacon cheeseburger called the “Big Daddy Pub Burger”.

Ledo Pizza (3105 Saint Paul Street)
Ledo is this cool little Italian chain restaurant that mostly serves pizza, but that has a great menu of sandwiches and pastas as well. I’m not hard to please when it comes to pizza, so I usually just get cheese or pepperoni. Ledo is a great place to go as a group, get a booth in the back and just hang out.

Donna's

Donna’s (3101 Saint Paul St)
So your parents come to visit you, and you want to take them out to dinner (or they want to take you out to dinner, you might get lucky). Where do you take them? Donna’s. Donna’s offers morning coffee and pastries, a number of signature salads and sandwiches at lunch, and has an innovative and constantly changing dinner menu. They also serve some of the best Mac & Cheese you will ever find, but be warned: it’s in the Appetizers section, but it’s a meal in and of itself. Also, you have to try the Sweet Potato Fries…along with everything else. Donna’s is amazing.

If you GO HOP you won’t go hungry, that’s for sure. Happy Eating, Charles Villagers!

It has been pretty hot in Baltimore this summer. But surely no one has felt the heat more than all the construction workers on campus.

There are a number of major projects underway. Thanks to the generous philanthropy of some of our most successful alumni, there will be four new buildings completed at Homewood in the next 2-3 years.

Perhaps the most eagerly awaited is the Brody Learning Commons, an adjunct to the MSE that will further the Milton S. Eisenhower Library’s role as the intellectual, social, and physical heart of the Homewood campus. The BLC will be a light-filled, four-story hub for collaborative learning, with a robust technology infrastructure, spaces for group and individual study, and will provide more than 500 new seats and add 15 group study rooms—space that will be greeted warmly by the undergraduate population.  Construction has already begun on the building, with a scheduled completion date of July 2012.

Here’s what the architect has to say: “The technology-rich Learning Commons includes group study spaces, seminar rooms, and a state-of-the-art lab designed to integrate the role of scientists into the field of paper and manuscript conservation. The Rare Books and Manuscripts collection is on prominent physical display, supplemented by digital presentation of materials that allows users to compare and contrast different editions of rare documents in virtual and physical form. An atrium, which provides a transition between Brody and the Library allows natural light to reach the lower levels of the Library while providing a civic space for the Learning Commons and the library community. The highly sustainable project is being designed to LEED Silver standards.”

Late last year, John C. Malone, Engr ’64 (MS), ’67 (PhD), donated $30 million to the Whiting School of Engineering for a 56,000-square-foot, four-story building on the Decker Quadrangle. But this isn’t just another brick building; Malone Hall will be specially designed for interdisciplinary work, housing the new Systems Institute as well as Johns Hopkins’ emerging initiative in individualized health.

According to the University, “the initiative in individualized health is expected to bring together engineers, life scientists and medical researchers from across Johns Hopkins. They will focus on bringing information science into the practice of medicine, with an initial emphasis on cancer, in a manner that will allow an unprecedented focus on treatment designed for the individual patient. The approach grows out of the recognition that genetic and epigenetic differences among patients explain, at least in part, why traditionally developed drugs help some people and not others. Instead of a piecemeal, component-by-component approach, the Systems Institute will take a multidisciplinary look at re-engineering entire systems of national importance, including medicine, health care delivery, network-enabled systems, information security, national infrastructure and education. In addition to faculty in the Whiting School, the institute will tap into the expertise of researchers from the university’s three health professions schools, Medicine, Public Health and Nursing; from the schools of Arts and Sciences, Business, and Education; and from the Applied Physics Laboratory, already one of the nation’s leading centers of systems engineering.”

Construction is set to begin next year on the Decker Quad next to Mason Hall, in the footprint outlined by students and faculty in the picture to the right.

The Cordish Lacrosse Center, the first facility of its kind, will house locker rooms and coaches’ offices for the men’s and women’s teams, a 50-person theater, a conference room, an academic center and a training room. A reception area on the second floor will lead to a patio overlooking the field that can be used for receptions and for game day spectators. On the field level, exhibits will chronicle the history of both programs. As the JHU Newsletter puts it, “For more than 100 years, Homewood Field has been the Yankee Stadium of college lacrosse: a comfortable nest for homestanding Blue Jays, a house of horrors for visiting teams. But eventually, even Yankee Stadium needs an upgrade…Completion of the Cordish Center will also benefit other Johns Hopkins athletes. The NCAA Division I lacrosse squads currently share space in the Newton H. White Athletic Center with the university’s 22 other sports programs. When the lacrosse teams move out, space they now occupy will open up to some of Johns Hopkins’ other teams, which compete with great success in NCAA Division III.”

But the upgrades to Homewood Field don’t stop there. The Athletic Department recently announced plans to build a state-of-the-art video display that will measure approximately 14 feet high by 48 feet wide.

The layout of the new scoreboard. It's going to be a lot bigger than this, I promise!

“Featuring 15HD pixel layout, the display will incorporate excellent clarity and contrast of images, multiple levels of protection from the elements and a more robust cabinet design with an improved ventilation system. The display, which will be used for Johns Hopkins football, field hockey, lacrosse and soccer, is capable of showing one large image or being divided into separate windows to show live and recorded video as well as an array of vivid graphics, up-to-the-minute statistics, colorful animations and advertisements with incredible brightness and wide-angle visibility.

Six Blue Jay teams – men’s lacrosse, women’s lacrosse, football, men’s soccer, women’s soccer and field hockey – call Homewood Field home. Johns Hopkins is nationally known for its prominent men’s lacrosse team, which has won 44 national championships, including nine NCAA titles. In addition, the football, women’s lacrosse, men’s soccer, women’s soccer and field hockey teams have combined for 16 appearances in the NCAA Tournament since 2005 with football, women’s lacrosse, men’s soccer and women’s soccer all advancing to the NCAA Quarterfinals at least once since 2006.

Homewood Field is generally regarded as the most storied facility in college lacrosse. With the installation of the video board this summer and the completion of the Cordish Lacrosse Center next spring, Johns Hopkins has ensured that Homewood Field will continue as the premier venue in the lacrosse world while also providing unmatched facilities for the Blue Jay football, soccer and field hockey programs.”

But despite my excitement as a player on the Men’s Soccer team over having a brand new scoreboard, my excitement as a Molecular & Cellular Biology/Neuroscience double major was piqued even more by the announcement of a massive, state-of-the-art Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory that will be built as an addition to Mudd Hall, the University’s main Biology complex.

“The new Undergraduate Teaching Lab and Biology Research Wing was conceived to complete the existing Mudd Levi complex by closing off the open fourth side of the courtyard and creating a new face to gently embrace Bufano Gardens to the north. The northern façade will be entirely glazed to enhance views of the wooded hillside from the labs and allow maximum northern daylight to enter the labs. At the center of the complex a new student commons with coffee bar will be created on the rooftop of the existing lecture hall to serve as a focal point for interaction and group identity for the natural sciences community. Undergraduate teaching laboratories for Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience and BioPhysics will take place on the lower three floors of the building with direct student access both from the new Mudd Commons and also from White Walk to the east. The upper floor will be fit out to accommodate Biology department research and have open lab, lab support and procedure space, meeting and seminar rooms and faculty offices for 7 Principal Investigator led research groups.

The 105,000 square foot new building will be a pragmatic and robust tool in the service of research and teaching in the natural sciences, with simple but durable finishes, abundant natural light, and modern equipment and systems. Particular attention has been paid to ensure that the building will be a model for low energy usage with a benchmark target set of using half of the energy of the average of the existing science buildings on campus. These guiding principals will create a building suitable for modern life sciences based research and able to accommodate evolutions in pedagogy and research over time.”

Construction is already underway and the UTL will be completed in the summer of 2013.

So, to sum up my position: NEW BUILDINGS @ HOMEWOOD = GOOD.

GO HOP!

When you’re taking summer classes, the work and reading you’ll have to do is concentrated about three-fold compared to the norm. Doing well means spending a fair amount of time in the library. Inevitably though, putting your nose to the grindstone for too many consecutive hours will lose you one perfectly good nose.

Here are a few tips for blowing off steam in the MSE:

The Beach! The Summer! YES!

1. At night, the sprinklers turn on over the Beach. Huge jets of water spray all over the grassy slope, turning it into the perfect slip n’ slide! First, make sure that you’ve brought along a change of clothes and a towel in your backpack. Then, sprint up the stairs to M level, past the security desk, out the door and dive onto the Beach. You’ll go a whole lot farther and faster if you bring your own sled (say, a plastic garbage can lid).

***WARNING: EXPERTS ONLY*** If you want to really take your mind-soothing shenanigans to the next level, bring along some dish-soap and just cover yourself with it. Happy Sliding!

The Keyser Quad is bounded by Gilman to the West, the MSE to the East, Ames and Krieger Halls to the South, and Mergenthaler and Remsen to the North.

2. Have you ever streaked? Yeah, don’t do that. This is a family blog, come on now. Instead, you should just gather your friends and take a group lap around the Keyser Quad. Feel free to chant or sing or quiz each other on the relationship between the axon radius and the space constant. Whatever floats your boat.

There's an alligator in there. Don't believe me? Go see for yourself. Really. I'm not joking.

3. Come to think of it, there’s a pond with a fountain in the President’s Garden. When you just can’t read another page, take your party of study-amigos right on over and lay in the grass underneath the starry, Summer night sky. But be careful, legend has it that there is an alligator in there…Forewarned is forearmed! I mean that literally. Bring a weapon to fend off the carnivorous reptiles.

***DISCLAIMER*** Actually, this is a pretty awful idea. A concurrent legend has it that if one falls asleep by the President’s pond, one turns into a crocodile his/herself, and that in his/her transformation he/she liberates the soul of the last poor student who was trapped in a crocodile’s body. And that’s just embarrassing for everyone.

This is basically what I'm talking about. This picture is from SOHOP, the Spring Open House and Overnight Program, when Milkman came to Homewood.

4. There is nothing wrong with a midnight library rave. Find a study room in some deep corner of either C or D level, close the door, turn up the speakers, hit play on your handy-dandy dubstep playlist and just go nuts.

***ADDENDUM*** Your handy-dandy dubstep playlist is something that I feel should be on the University’s official list of what to bring to college.  But for some reason, my correspondence on the matter goes unanswered, and year after year it is excluded from the suggested packing list! Go figure…

5. Last time I checked, all of the library computers are equipped with the Paleo-Windows game Minesweeper. I think it pretty much goes without saying that you should make use of this often in order to temporarily shirk your academic responsibilities. But remember, library etiquette is key to ensuring that you aren’t reborn as something lame in the next life like a Californian banana slug, a Brazilian banana spider, an Ethiopian banana frog or, God forbid, a banana of any geographical origin.

To conclude, here’s a quick quiz on polite computer use:

Imagine that you’re playing Minesweeper (no, no don’t click that one! It’s a mine for sure!) and no other computers are open. A visibly distressed undergraduate rushes up to you and says, “I have 5 minutes to print my thirty-page thesis and make it all the way across campus for a final! I’m sorry to interrupt your game of Minesweeper–by the way, you should put a flag on that square; it’s a mine for sure–but I’m ever so visibly distressed! May I please use that computer for just a moment? You answer:

A. No.

B. Of course!

C. You have ten seconds! GOOOOOO!!!!

D. Are you kidding??? There’s no way that’s a mine! There’ a “1″ between those two isolated squares and a “1″ just to the right of the other one! Gah! Just for being bad at Minesweeper, heck no!

Obviously, the right answer is B, but if you want to have a high potassium content in your next life, be my guest! Fun fact: The banana is the most radioactive fruit!

Well, that’s all for now, Blue Jay Nation.

As always, Go Hop!

Who’d have ever thought that I’d take French?

My Chihuahua Pepper was none too thrilled when I informed her of my decision to take French instead of Spanish

Being that I’m from Houston, Texas, I was raised on a hearty diet of Tex-Mex, Spanish and Fútbol from themoment I left the womb. I learned how to count in Spanish long before my first formal math class. I

could order un sandwich de jamón y queso and ask someone, “Cuantos años tienes?” before I could reliably make a ham and cheese sandwich myself or tell someone how old I was without using my fingers! In my high school International Baccalaureate curriculum, I chose to pursue Spanish as part of my diploma, and in doing so wrote papers like La doctrina económica Laissez-faire en América Central y América del Sur for my profesora, Señora Companys.

Why? Because if there were a Harry Potter class, I'd take it. For sure.

But I had had quite enough of language classes by the time I got to Homewood, and hence did not register for any Spanish classes (or English classes, for that matter) during my Freshman year.

Yet, here I am now with a foreign language on my class schedule for the Fall, and it’s French Elements I. How did I

get here? How did I fall so far??? (Jokes)

In fact, the reason I’ve decided to take French has nothing to do with wanting to learn another foreign language (which I do) or strongly identifying for the French, their language and their culture (which I don’t). Instead, the reason I’ve decided to take French is that I couldn’t take a class I wanted to take because its time conflicted with a class that I wanted to take more.

This picture represents an ignorance of all things French only slightly more severe than mine (I mean, please. I know the Louvre when I see it.)

But I’m not worried. I’ve found that some of the classes in which I’ve grown and learned the very most have been those which I never expected to take. For example, Introduction to Bioethics and Foundations of Modern Political Philosophy are two classes that bear little relevance to my chosen academic trajectory but which have significantly deepened my understanding of and improved my ability to analyze the roots and repercussions of world events. So I have a healthy respect for the spontaneous choice of the curriculum broadening class.

Which brings us back to French. Why am I taking it? Because my girlfriend is a French Cultural Studies minor and she told me to? That’s part of it. Because I plan to take my mom to France one day like she’s always wanted? That’s part of it too. But I think the real reason is that I believe college doesn’t have to be a narrowing of general interests to solely professional pre-medical necessities. I want to take a few classes outside of my major, I want to explore the vast catalog of courses that the University offers, I want to continually test my interest in areas other than Molecular & Cellular Biology and Neuroscience if only in the end to have made doubly sure of my desire to pursue them.

So, for this semester semester at least, Nous Allons Hop!!! (Or whatever…)

This post is very late. I was asked to write a blog essentially wrapping up my freshman year, but I have been at an uncharacteristic loss for words recently.

My freshman year was anything but ordinary. I came to Hopkins with big aspirations and an elaborate plan for how I was to go about achieving them. Unfortunately, I became extremely ill about half-way through the fall semester. I had to drop nearly all of my classes, and couldn’t practice with the soccer team for a majority of the season. Since I was mostly too sick to leave my room for about a month and a half, I couldn’t make it to many lectures in the classes I had left, so I didn’t do too well on exams. My professors were extremely helpful in allowing me to make up missed labs, lectures, etc., and I ended up passing everything in the end, but I have a sneaking suspicion that my professors helped me out a little bit in the grade department as well. I actually did really well in my Neuroscience class, because for some reason studying for Neuro made me feel better. Go figure. In fact, my friend Megan (who went to the emergency room with me both times) was testing me on Delta-Notch Signaling while a nervous, shaky-handed medical student performed two incredibly painful, unsuccessful Lumbar Punctures (finally a resident came over and did it, thank God…). Eventually I was well enough to travel for soccer, but I still couldn’t play or practice with my team. I watched from the bench as they made the NCAA tournament, eventually finishing in the Sweet Sixteen and ranked ninth in the country.

I went home for winter break intending to rest up and take another whack at college in the Spring, but it was then I received the devastating news that my mother had cancer. For the second semester in a row, I had a weight on my shoulders that I just couldn’t shake. But things were looking up, I did fairly well and learned a lot (for starters, that I’m just not cut out for Art History). The day after my last final (and the day before my birthday), my mom’s PET results came back clean and she was declared cancer free. Talk about a silver lining.

But the point of this post is not to share my sob story. It’s to express that despite everything that happened to me over the past year, it was still the best year of my life.

This year, I was accepted to the Student Admissions Advisory Board, through which I’ve been able to reach out to prospective students and to be a part of Lucie’s show, “Learn More, See More, B’More”. I can’t adequately express how much it meant to me that she asked me to be her co-host.

This year, I played my first minutes in a Hopkins jersey, a dream I’ve had for years.

This year, I founded NeuroJAYS (The Neuroscience Journal Association for Young Scientists), an academic organization composed of Neuroscience majors who will meet and discuss some of the most important journal articles in Cellular, Molecular and Systems Neurobiology with Hopkins Neuro faculty.

This year, I wrote my first Curriculum Vitae and applied to be a research assistant in the Dawson Lab of the Institute for Cellular Engineering-Neuroregeneration Program (NeuroICE) at the School of Medicine. I got the position, and expecting to be doing the same menial research support task every day, I was surprised to find that after only a small amount of time I was actually making a substantial contribution to the research of the lab. The post-doctoral fellow with whom I work very closely, Maged, has taken it upon himself to try to teach me everything he knows–from techniques to theory. Soon I’ll be beginning my own research project, thanks to his mentoring.

This year, by simply surviving, I gained an immunity to at least four diseases. That’s gotta count for something.

Hopkins has been the warmest home for me. The people I’ve met here have been on the whole brilliant, genuine, and kind. The opportunities I’ve been given have been once-in-a-lifetime. My professors have all been excellent teachers and world-class researchers. I don’t know whether I’ll have better luck, better health or better grades next year, but the family I’ve found at Homewood will last. That I can be sure of.

Go Hop. Forever.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. The season of warmth and sun and fun and friends and polysyndeton and hiding from CTY kids. It’s Summer at Hopkins. It’s SummerHop. Get psyched.

The Beach is the spot to be during the summer. This picture is misleading. The Beach is always full of people playing soccer, tanning or just hanging out.

I first experienced SummerHop when I took classes during the second summer term just before my freshman year (read a blog about my pre-frosh SummerHop experience here).

Just hugging a giant Reese's at HersheyPark. No big deal.

But SummerHopDos is going to be a whole different adventure. There are some key differences between this summer and last. A year ago, I was living in The Buildings with a bunch of rising high school seniors and a few Hopkins freshmen like myself, whereas now I’m subletting from one of my best friends and staying in his house in Charles Village, just a block or two south of Barnes & Noble. Last summer, I was taking 6 credits of humanities classes (Introduction to Bioethics and Foundations of Modern Political Philosophy), whereas this summer I’m not taking any classes at all (not for credit anyway…) and am doing research full time at the School of Medicine. I am, however, attending a class. Next Fall, I and nearly all the sophomore Neuroscience majors will be taking Nervous System I (followed by NSII in the Spring). Since they’re both offered in the Summer, why not check them out?

And on the weekends, we explore. This weekend I’m going on a road-trip with some friends into the heart of

At a JHU SummerU party...

western Pennsylvania…why? Because we can. The weekend after that we’re going to an Orioles game and will probably be up to some shenanigans, which have historically ended in disaster and hilarity. Yes, my friends, on the weekends we are Blue Jays on the lam.

But when we return, we put our noses to our respective academic and professional grindstones and excel in a way that only Hopkins students can. Unrelenting, indiscriminate, indefatigable learning. Or something.

SummerHopDos. Let’s go Hop.

Yesterday was the last day of classes at Homewood. Finals are coming up, and some people still have a paper due here or there, but for the most part things are winding down. Before long, Blue Jays will start to filter out of the dorms and fly home, staggered by the date of their last final.

Mine is Early Renaissance Art on May 17th. I’m not remotely prepared, but it’s okay because next week is Dead Week–a week of no classes and no finals. It’s essentially a grace period for studying between when classes end and the first finals begin.

Yesterday was also my last midterm. I don’t know why, but the last week of classes always has a ton of midterms all crammed into just a few days. Nonetheless, after attending all the review sessions I could and persevering through a few (really) late nights, I made it through.

Commencement is coming up. It’ll be sad to say goodbye to all the seniors I’ve grown close to, but every Blue Jay has to leave the Nest eventually. Congratulations to the Class of 2011.

This is going to be a really short post. Usually I write a lot more, but today I think I’m going to sign off and leave you with some pictures from the year. Enjoy!

My last day in Houston!

In front of the Buildings, about to head to D.C.!

Being Don Quixote in the Bufano Sculpture Garden

I can't quite recall what was happening when this picture was taken, but I think I was in a degree of danger...

Let's go Hop! Big smiles after a big win!

It's pretty cold during Intersession, and you should dress accordingly. Earmuffs are a must.

The "Learn More, See More, B'More" team filming the Aquarium episode!

Just resting my eyes...Art History papers are exhausting...

Just nappin' on Q-Level, no big deal.

Success! Classes are done!

In January, I began work as an Undergraduate Research Assistant at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Cell Engineering (Neuroregeneration and Stem Cell Biology programs) at the School of Medicine. It has been an unbelievably rewarding experience, and since there’s been so much interest among the pre-frosh and prospective applicants regarding what it’s really like to be involved in research at Hopkins, I thought I’d microblog my day. I’ll do my best to give you a accurate play-by-play of what goes on in my lab. Ready? LET’S GO!

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7:31am: Alarm just went off. My roommate’s still asleep, so I shut it off as quickly as possible. Time to shower, get dressed and go get something to eat before I catch the 8:25 JHMI shuttle down to the School of Medicine. It’s going to be a good day.

8:15am: Just woke up again…I put my head down for one second, and I was out. But I gotta run, there’s a shuttle with my name on it that’s about to pull up in front of the JHU B&N on St. Paul Street.

8:28am: On the bus, all is well. I was lucky to get a seat in the back. This thing is packed. We’re passing Penn Station!

8:45am: I’ve just arrived at the School of Medicine. The shuttle let me off at the East Monument & Broadway stop. I walked over to the Broadway Research Building, where I work.

8:55am: I stroll (nay, I saunter) into the lab. Now that I’ve made it to the 7th floor of the BRB, my day’s luck has surely been restored. I say hello to my post-doc, Maged, and set about getting out the slides I didn’t get to finish preparing on Tuesday. Mouse brain sections at 30 microns thickness in well-plates are removed meticulously with a tiny paintbrush and then (in a phospate buffer solution, or PBS) arranged on a glass slide. Later, once they’ve dried, I’ll stain them with whatever protocol Maged tells me to. But that’s a spoiler.

10:34am: Okay, time to stretch my legs. I’m about to take a lap around the lab. My favorite place to not work at work? The Cold Room. But I’ve got several more slides that I need to prep before lunch, so I’d better get to it.

12:12pm: Slides are done. Now I’m just waiting for my good friend Ardi Mendoza (who works in the adjacent lab and is also the recently elected president of the Student Government Association…he’s quite the achiever) to finish up his cell quantification. Okay, he just finished and gave me the “let’s get the hell out of here” wave. Thai food, here we come!

1:08pm: Back from lunch. One of the best things about working at the School of Medicine is the easy access to all the amazing food in the neighborhood. There are all kinds of great take-out restaurants, and even an indoor market about two blocks past the School of Public Health on E. Monument.

1:20pm: I asked Maged what I should do with the slides I just prepped. He told me to let them dry in a drawer, so as to protect them from the light. He told me that I’m going to be doing some immunohistochemistry–something that I’ve never done before…so I’ll walk you through it.

First, I have to make a 0.2% Triton X-100 solution in PBS. East enough. I turn around and, lo and behold, there on the shelf is the Triton X-100! In 50ml of PBS, to make a 0.2% TX-100 solution, I only need 100μl. Done. Solution made. Now what? Well, now I have to vortex it for about a minute (which involves holding it on a high-vibration rubber platform until your hand feels like it’s going to fall off) and then sonicate it for 30 minutes (which involves placing the tube with my solution into a machine known as an ultrasonic bath, or a sonicator, that uses sound energy to agitate particles in a sample). During the sonication, I’ve got to distribute 22 sections from each of the 5 brains that I’m working with into four wells in a 24-well plate. So I’ll use 20 wells total, with an average of 5.5 sections in each well. Okay, then the whole well-plate will go into the 0.2% Triton X-100/PBS solution for 30 minutes. Now for the blocking solution. It’s a 2% normal goat serum (which, ironically, is a very bizarre name) in a 0.02% Triton X-100 solution in PBS. So, I’ll just dilute my last solution 10x by volume of PBS and add 2% of the normal goat serum. Long story short, I put the sections in that solution and then incubate it at 4°C (39°F) overnight. Done for now.

3:47pm: Having completed that, I’m going to go talk to Maged what we’re going to be doing after he publishes his paper. He’ll be submitting it soon, we’re all very excited. I’ll be working this summer, and he and I have been discussing getting me my own project to run for the next few years. So, it’s time for some brainstorming. I love this job.

4:58pm: It’s time to head out. Today was mostly a bench day, meaning that I just sat and did a lot of work sorting and prepping tissues for staining, imaging and lesion quantification (all of which I will do next Tuesday). In my time here, though, I’ve done everything from surgery on mice to statistical analysis of lesion studies. Just recently I went through the training necessary to access and work in the animal research facility in the basement of the BRB, so I’m excited to be able to learn a bunch more procedures. Also, no big deal or anything, when I was down there last I saw Professor Sol Snyder, the very namesake of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins. He just happens to have the highest Hirsch Index (a measure of both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist) of any living biologist, and ranks among the ten most often cited biologists of all time. I’m a little proud of my knees for not buckling.

It’s been a good day at NeuroICE, and I’m going to head home now. There’s a shuttle waiting for me outside the School of Public Health, so I’d better go catch it…I’ve got to get to soccer practice on time!

GO HOP!!!