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 At
the end of a year, it's hard to remember everything that's
happened. I finished my first year at Wheaton College in
May. My roommate Kasey and I definitely were not known on
our floor for having the cleanest room, but we probably
were known for having one of the loudest rooms. This
is Kasey and me preparing to finally clean the bathroom
for end of the year checkout.
Over the summer I enjoyed being back in San Diego and
basking in the California sun. Since I've always
been told how young I look, I decided to take advantage of
it at one of the many Padres games we attended this
summer. At Anaheim stadium, they let kids 12 and
under go down on the field and run the bases after the
game. Let's just say that I recently turned 20 and
as of 4 months ago I could pass for 12 with no questions
asked.
I returned to Wheaton this past August and have continued
to love my experiences there. My roommate Katie and
I continue the tradition of being the last ones to bed
every night on our floor. My friends and I make
several trips to Chicago. For
information on our FAO Schwartz escapade, see Amy's
page. No trip would be complete however without
visiting the best ice cream shop ever - Ghirardellis
- or without a mad sprint to make the train ride back (we
seldom were successful.) My favorite class this
year, as a biology major on the pre-med track, has been
organic chemistry. Oh wait, that's the brutal class
that I study for incessantly while drinking unhealthy
amounts of caffeine. My favorite class has been
Biological Systems, a sort of introduction to research
class. This semester we worked entirely with a small
fern: Ceratopteris
richardii. Our class grew so fond
of this fern that we all bought t shirts displaying its
fantastic alternation of generations lifecycle on the back
to surprise our prof! (You can see a photo of our
class by clicking on the t shirts link in the last
sentence.) My independent research
project, which I may continue informally next semester,
incorporated RAPD/PCR techniques in order to determine
genetic variance between three strains of Ceratopteris
richardii. It was a blast. We had some snow,
but I'm glad to be back home for a sunny Christmas before
returning to college in January where I will be reunited
with our pet fish Izzy and my baby coffee plant who are
spending the holidays at friends' houses in Illinois.
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