Mine was on the biocorrosive properties of sulphate reducing bacteria, which was mostly my father's idea, which is cool, because I really didn't have the initiative to come up with an idea of my own. Senior-itis. I was in the biotechnology lab, which sounds really legitimate, until you realize we spent the majority of time in first period biotechnology chatting with other students in the class on Facebook.
Well, that's not true. I spent a majority of first period sitting in traffic on the Beltway, cursing myself for leaving for a school that was forty-five minutes away twenty minutes before class actually began. And sometimes I was late because I was getting coffee. Coffee is fun. And sometimes I had to pick up Katherine Sheridan.
| These things break down more often than a drunk Snooki |
So we started in the fall by writing our introductory topic papers. The first five weeks of the year were devoted to determining what our projects will actually do. Since I already had the project idea, I spent the first five weeks doing my multivar homework, which was extremely easy and boring as all get out. Then we spent another three weeks writing our introductory topic papers, which involved a lot of googling. The hardest part was having to make the citations. You have to remember which parts to italizise--italicise--put in slanty letters. Also, you have to know page numbers and put things in parenthesis. It's hard. But I got an A on the paper, so I decided I could relax for the rest of the year.
And relax I did. Maybe a little too much at times. I finally got my little freeze-dried pod of bacteria. Then, I had to mix up bottles of bacteria food. When mixing up bacteria food, it's always helpful to make sure your lab has the correct ingredients ahead of time. Otherwise we end up with bottles full of half-mixed pulp because your lab is out of permagnium biphosphadiddle. Also, glucose smells like Chinese food. And cow fat is disgusting brown glop.
But at last, my bacteria started to grow in their little airtight container in the incubator. Said airtight container had to be opened every week to feed them. Said bacteria, being sulphate reducing bacteria, had a habit of smelling like rotten eggs and making the whole lab smell like said rotten eggs. Eventually, I trained the other people in my lab to flinch whenever I took my container out. So I decided, out of the goodness of my heart, to come in after school to change my rotten egg soup and spend first period on Facebook, like normal.
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| The black stuff smells like rotten eggs. |
Then came March, when we were expected to get results. Results! Yikes! So I got my father to send me instructions for the cleaning solution we were supposed to use to clean the little pieces of iron that had been living in the bacteria test tubes for six weeks. Somehow, I talked Taylor into helping me. I seriously didn't know how I managed to do that . . . oh, wait, I had driven her to school three times that week because her car kept breaking down.
Being the only girl in your group of friends with a working car is really handy. Katherine Sheridan still owes me fifty miles and a couple of coffees.
So I mixed up my cleaning solution, which required me to mix scraps of metal in a gentle acid and submerse my iron scraps in it. We had to do it under a cleaning hood, and it was Taylor's job to take out the scraps and weigh them every five minutes while I brushed them with a toothbrush. She complained the whole way that it was something I should be doing, but I told her that if I did the weighing, I'd mess it up--only she had the precision to get the results we needed. I think she took that as an admission of my general incompetence, but I really meant it as sarcasm. And, also, we had a track meet that evening.
So after we got the data and bottled up the weird chemicals we used, we went up to the track meet. My final paper was due the next day, but I'd be darned if I didn't want to watch everybody run. So Taylor took her position of official score keeper, Chris and Dylan took the announcer's mike, and I brought my little laptop up into the press box and started hammering out my data tables.
All was going fairly normally until Coach radioed up to us to make an announcement about the concession stand being open. Chris and Dylan decided to put on a little skit about how great the concessions were. The first scores rolled in and Taylor began recording them with razor sharp precision. Katherine was there, helping, and Taylor was bossing everyone around.
For some reason, halfway through creating my data tables, everyone disappeared from the box--I think they'd all gone to get Chinese food (the glucose had turned me off for good). Coach radioed up and told me to announce the first call for the 800m run. I took the mike and announced "First call for the eight hundred meter run!" A feeling of immense power washed over me.
Taylor sprinted back into the booth, her eyes on fire. "What did you do?" she shouted. "I told you not to touch anything!"
Now, I expect that from her. But then Katherine runs up and says, "Liz, did Coach tell you to do that?", and Chris rushes back and says "You had permission for that announcement, right?" So that's how I learned that no other senior on the team trusted me with responsibility.
The night went on. I formatted my graphs and asked Taylor about APA formatting. Matt Baron showed up and proceeded to hug Chris. The concession stand was heavily advertised by food puns, including some about 'hot dogs' that contained small amounts of innuendo. Of course, the best one was "What do you call a nosy pepper? Jalapeno business!"
| Because jalapenos are peppers! Get it? |
Did I mention that now the basketball coach does announcements during home meets?
Anyway, apparently I was the only member of my biotechnology class to have data, so I was the first one to technically finish my paper. The lab director suggested I should do another round of my experiment--after all, I didn't get statistically significant results. But it was second semester, and there was Italian water ice in the classroom, and I had data. So the answer was no.
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