Spring 2016 week 15: wrapping it all up

All good things must come to an end, and this week marked allot of ends in my life. The first one came earlier in the week when I began to finish my classes for the semester. The next end came Thursday as I wrapped up my last day as a intern at Tgen. The last end came Friday, as it marked my last day in my home state, Arizona. This has been a busy week for me since aspects for each of these ends called for my immediate attention. 

For my finals I prepared how nearly every student does, poorly and at the last minute haha. Studying was actually quite challenging considering the fact that my room was in a state of chaos due to packing and my study are was over run with miscellaneous nick-nacks that needed to be either thrown out or packed away. Through it all though, I was able to manage.

My final day at Tgen was very bitter sweet. It consisted mostly of tossing DNA samples and wrapping up any loose documents from all the work I did. The crushing moment however came when I had to turn in my ID badge. I was pretty disappointed because I was under the impression I was going to be able to keep it but as it turns out that's not the case. Kathleen gave me kind farewell. She gave me all her contact information and told me if I ever needed a recommendation or a reference not to hesitate to ask her for one.

Moving away from Arizona however is going to be a tough change for me over the next few months. I've never lived anywhere else other than the valley, so moving all the way across the country to Watertown New York will take some adjusting. It should be a fun new adventure and I'm looking forward to what it has in store for me. Like they say, when one door closes another one opens. 

Thank you all for taking the time to read my blog and I wish you ask the best. 

Till next time. 

Spring 2016 Week 14: Wrapping things up

This week at TGen was pretty tame. On Tuesday, I made a few final edits to both the how to build a poster guide as well as the waste management guide. The rest of the day was primarily spent getting ready for my final week. I organized my notes, made sure my documents were neatly organized, and that that everything that needed to be documented was properly done so. Kathleen also asked me to submit two more series of posters to the IT guys so that she has all the posters that she needs to be printed before I am gone. I pre-formatted them all for her already so if ever in the future she needs to print off more all she has to do is find the poster she wants and submit it.

Today was a slightly more exciting day. There were free bagels in the break room which is always nice. I also got to get out of my office. I had to run a poster down to the second floor to get cut. The gentleman who helped me is very nice and an interesting fella to talk to. After that, Kathleen and I spent the remainder of the day disposing of old DNA samples from past experiments. I found this mindless task quite soothing. it was nice to have a moment where I am still being productive but my brain can kick back and take a 30-minute break.  

I'm going to have to do something for Kathleen for my last week as a thank you for treating me so kindly. Maybe ill bring in doughnuts.... or maybe something a bit more healthy, I don't know yet. Well, like always thank you for reading and have a wonderful week. 

spring 2016 week 13: Out of the office

This exciting week at TGen was neither exciting nor at TGen. Kathleen was out of town this week so she gave me a list of things that I can work on off-site. This is mostly just to save me from having to pay ridiculous parking fees since TGen no longer has an employee parking lot. Well, that's enough of that, let me tell you all about the less interesting than normal work I've done this week. So last week I mentioned that I was reviewing the waste management guide. Well, this week I finished reviewing it and added some new information that I gathered from the internet as well as the surveys that I used to interview the labs. Hopefully, these new suggested safety practices will catch on. I also started the "How to make safety posters for dummies" guide, or at least that's what it reads like. I've learned this week that it is difficult to document some of these steps due to the changes and variations in the different version of PowerPoint. The best I can do at times is to give vague and general steps. Other times I feel like a smart @$$ when I give instructions on how to rotate a picture 90 degrees in either direction. I mean, the steps are so simple. You click on the picture, click and hold on the green dot above it, then rotate it 90 degrees in either direction. I feel like it's almost mocking, but oh well, Kathleen said to make it as dummy proof as possible so I am. Other than that, I got nothing else for all yall. 

Like always, thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed!

Here is a video from one of my favourite youtube channels that I found interesting and maybe you will as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z35_1e1MtI 

Spring 2016 Week 12: Spring Cleaning

Hello, all, and welcome back to yet another week where I shall share with you what I have done with my time at TGen. Let's get started! Tuesday was a good day filled with productivity. Kathleen and I spent over four hours downstairs in the waste room doing a little spring cleaning. We first started by going through this huge stack of expired kits that the labs could no longer use. Since nearly all of them were still sealed, we had to cut them open to see what was inside. once we opened them up we cataloged what was in them and if it was hazardous or if we could dispose of it down the drain. Unfortunately, nearly none of the chemicals were reusable so we threw a lot of stuff away. We were able to recycle the containers of some of the nonhazardous chemicals though. After that was done, we went through all the spill kits that were stored down there along with a huge drum and multiple boxes of "socks" and "pillows" for cleaning up spills. The reason for the quotation marks is because these "socks" and "pillows" are not articles of clothing that you wear on your feet or a comfortable sleeping support. Instead, they are fabric tubes, or squares, filled with absorbent materials used to clean up different types of hazardous spills. We found lots of cool stuff while perusing through all the stuff we didnt know TGen had. Once we were done with that we began to reorganize the place. We got a rack brought up from the basement by facilities to be placed in a corner in the common area so that we could store things that we thought should be easily accessible. Some of the things that we moved out onto this rack were all those reusable chemicals that I cataloged, the bins for both the spent bulbs and batteries, and a few hazardous spill kits. This was pretty much the bulk of the day. The rest of the day was spent emailing the help desk about the posters that I was trying to print. They told me that they weren't going to print the posters because they thought it wasn't going to turn out correctly, but after I assured them that the formatting is how it's supposed to be they finally decided to print it. Well, guess what happened..... I was right! The posters came out perfect and we only have to trim off two strips of white space which is about 1/2"x44".


Thursday was another very productive day, even though it is my short day. We started off by disposing of old DNA samples that were left in the freezers in the basement by previous labs. After this, it was all desk work. Kathleen sent me the old "Hazardous Waste Management Guide" so that I can review it and make changes to the document as needed. Basically, she wants me to review it and make sure that everything makes sense and then put in the new info we gathered months ago about waste minimization. She also asked me to create a how-to guide for creating the safety posters. She wants this so that in the future when I'm no longer an intern, she, or her new intern, can print off more safety posters or even create them if need be. These are tasks that will carry over into next week so expect to hear about it again.

Well, once again, thank you for visiting my blog, and like always, I hope you enjoyed reading.

Spring 2016 Week 11: Time to move on

This week at TGen was once again fairly typical. On Tuesday, we went into the lab on the east side of the fourth floor to set up another SAA (Satalite Accumulation Area) since the other ones we set up have proved to be effective. After that, we ventured down into the waste room where Kathleen and I discussed rearranging it so that we could remove some stuff off the top of the flammables cabinet and just have a better overall flow of things. While we were down there I snagged a few quick photos for a few posters that I was making. once that was all done we ascended to the sixth floor to claim our posters that we requested to be printed from the previous week before.

On Thursday, Kathleen was in meetings for most of the day so I worked by myself. We got a larger number of new SDS's in that morning than usual, so I spent about 30 mins looking them up and logging them into the online database. Once that was done I started working on the posters again. One big thing that Kathleen and I did not like about the posters was how much white space was left on the paper. The printer prints the posters on a roll that is 44" wide and our posters are only 17"x22". We asked the help desk if they could just print two posters on the same sheet but they told us that the printer does not allow it. I, being the stuborn fool I am, refused to accept this lie and found a way to format the posters to get around this issue. I sent in the new set of freshly formated posters to the help desk for printing. They did not email me back telling me there was an issue with the posters so we'll just see how they turn out on tuesday. After I finished that I took the new posters we got from Tuesday down to the second floor to get cut to size. I had a great talk with the tech down there who showed me some things that would have made my life so much easier when first started making these dang posters. He also pointed out that the TGen logo I was using on the posters was stretched. I didn't know this since I got the logo from another interns document. He then showed me where I can find tons of TGen logos in TGens intranet. with this in mind, I went straight back to my office to change the logo on evey single poster I made. So now that I had two posters cut and ready to go I got the frames and put them in. To my suprise, they were too small. I quickly double checked the measurements of the frame and the size i formatted the posters to make sure this wasnt my fault before I started pointing fingers. Luckily, it wasnt my fault. It turned out that for some reason the printer, or one of the help desk emploies shrunk them down half an in in each direction. I only hope that they dont mess up the new posters that I sent in. I gave very specific size dimentions so I dont thik they will, but who ever knows.

So next week were getting back to our roots! Kathleen and I are going to go back to focusing on waste minimization efforts. Im excited because honestly, I am bored to death of making these stupid posters!!! I just hope that the time I spent on them actually helps the staff practice good safety habits.

Well my lovely readers, thank you again for stoping by and thank you for all your comments. Till next time, have a good week!

Spring 2016 Week 10: Test Print!

Welcome to another week where I get to tell you all about the adventures of being an intern at TGen. Remember last week when I said that this week I was going to get some of my safety posters printed out? Well, guess what! This week we finally got a poster printed (it's the picture at the bottom)! The downside, there were some ghosts in the formatting that showed up on the printed copy but were not visible on the original poster that I made. In addition to that, something happened when the poster was being printed and somehow got snagged, so there's this funky little scrunched up part on the poster that in all reality isn't even noticeable. The guy who is in charge of printing the posters said he would redo it since it was an error on their end. Lucky break for us because I was able to find the errors in the formatting that made those original mistakes show up on the poster and fix it then send it back down for reprinting. All in all, nobody ever needs to know that there were ever any original mistakes haha. We also sent over another poster to be printed since we were satisfied with the size dimensions that the poster came out as. Next week we should have a bunch of posters printed out and we'll  begin hanging them.

Kathleen found a new poster topic that she wants me to focus on. Cryostat Safety! She has tasked me with creating an informative cryostat poster that has a short list of safety information that should be taken into regard when using the cryostat. A good way to think about it is like an infographic, that's pretty much what I'm doing.

Like always, I'll keep yall up to date and hope you enjoyed reading. Have a nice day.

Spring 2016 Week 9: Going paperless!

This week at TGen was a fairly busy and productive one. Let’s start at the beginning. Tuesday was important for a few reasons. The first reason was because I heard back from Sigma-Aldrich about them accidently not sending us an SDS with two of our purchases as well as requesting them to email us all of our SDS's from here on out. They wanted some information that was above my pay grade, so I had to pass on the information to Kathleen to take care of, but were a step closer to making TGen more sustainable and eco-friendly. Tuesday was also the board meeting for the heads of the departments. I went because I’m Kathleen’s intern I suppose, I really have no clue why I have to go to these things. During the meeting, the big thing we discussed was how TGen is going paperless. Over the next few months, all the offices at TGen have to scan all their documents and shred them, which leads into what I got to do today. 

Today I spent a few hours going through file after file after file, checking every single document in them to find its corresponding file on the computer so that we know what documents still need to be scanned before they are shredded. It was tedious work but kind of fun at the same time. It was the electronic document version of find Waldo. It also really gives you an idea of how bad some of these scientists in the labs are at filing their paperwork and writing up documents for research proposals. 

Anyways, next week Kathleen and I are finally going to print out some of the safety posters that I came up with and hang them. I hope they are a success and really get people there thinking about some of the silly mistakes they make.

Well once again, that is it for this week. Like always, I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you next week. 

Spring 2016 Post 8: The semester of the missing spring break!

Even though this week is spring break at school, it's just another week at TGen. Needless to say, I still had to go in for my internship. This is good news though because a fair bit happened that I am excited to share.

The first success of the week came when Kathleen told me on Tuesday that one of the labs asked her if they could have one of the chemicals in the waste room, that I cataloged for reuse. This is great news because it proves that the effort put into cataloging all the chemicals was actually beneficial. it also shows that the labs recognise that these chemicals are down there and that they can use them instead of having to pay ridiculous amounts of money to send them away to be disposed of.

The second big win on the week was that Kathleen and I were able to set up two SAA sites in the labs on the east side of floor five for beta testing. If these SAA's really catch on and are efficient that we plan to set up SAA's in the remaining sites that we scouted in the other labs.

Last but not least, I have to bring up the posters once again. I have come up with and found many good safety posters to the point where we are ready to print some out and hang them up for all of TGen to see. I'm not sure exactly when we are going to do this since we have a board meeting on Tuesday and Thursdays are short days, but it should be within the next week or so. I will keep yall updated.

Well, that's all I got. Here is a youtube video you should watch. It asks two questions for you to try and figure out if you'd like. It's some pretty interesting stuff. who knows, you may learn something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBjibuHxEk&feature=em-subs_digest

Like always, thank you for viewing and see you next week!

Spring 2016 Post 7: Posters

This wasn't a very interesting week at TGen so I don't have much to say. All I worked on this week were those safety posters that I mentioned in last weeks blog post. I've learned a lot of very interesting stuff while making these posters such as there are special explosion proof fridges specially designed to store your flammable chemicals in so that they don't blow up your lab, and that it is really hard to make whimsical education safety posters with less 20 words. I should consult twitter and see if they have anything that would be useful. Kathleen wants to get some of the posters that I came up with printed next week so that we can start hanging them up. We also want to get the SAA's set up next week now that we know where we want them. So pretty much, to summarize this week, I worked on posters and made plans to do a bunch of stuff next week. So next week I should have an abundance of cool information to share with yall. Until then here is an educational song about quarks. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kXkWXSXRA

Spring 2016 Post 6: More Lab Walk Troughs!

Hello, all and welcome back. As I'm sure you've already guessed were going to be talking about lab walk throughs some more. I know what you're thinking, "are lab walk throughs all this guy does?”. Well, sometimes it may seem that way, but no, I also do things, like make safety posters with pictures of dogs like this.

This picture belongs to a poster that says "If HE can wear his PPE than so can YOU!" HAHAHA! It’s funny because he's a dog.... Unfortunately, not all the posters will have dogs on them. I have a list of seven safety topics that I have to make posters for. So far it’s been fun trying to come up with witty and creative ways to convey the message through a single photo with as little text as possible. 

So now let’s get back to the lab walk through. So Tuesday Kathleen and I finally went up to the five west lab. It is a very..... full lab to say the least. It was nearly impossible to find a good potential SAA spot anywhere in that lab. Kathleen and I discussed renovating the lab and trying to find it some more space. The talk kind of scared me because the way she made it sound was as if she wanted me to do the renovations. I’m all for knocking down walls and tearing out cabinets and that sort of stuff, but I’m no contractor. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing like a good old DIY renovation project to get my blood pumping, but I’d rather avoid being sued by the city of Phoenix for violating building codes. Oh boy would that be interesting though. 

Oh! Good news before I go. I finally got all (or as many as I could find) the SDS's for the chemicals that I inventoried down in the waste room. Now it’s time to move to the next phase of that project. 

Spring 2016 post 5: Just follow the rules yo!!!!

Well, this week at TGen was a bit of a snoozer. Nothing really exciting happened because Kathleen was out of the office all day Tuesday, which is my long day there so typically we do all the cool stuff then. Without her, I couldn't go down into the storage room or set up interviews with the lab techs, so what did I end up doing you may wonder? Write-ups -_- ....... I got to spend my time sitting around boring myself to death trying to come up with different ways to make following the rules sound like a fun thing you should want to do, as well as something you have to do. After a while, I grew weary of that, so I moved on to coming up with ideas for educational posters that Kathleen and I can hang around the labs. The goal of theses posters is to educate the scientists in a friendly (more like passive aggressive) manner to do a variety of different tasks, most of which they should be doing anyways. Without being able to corroborate the lessons we actually wanted to promote, and what some of the lab lingo meant, with Kathleen, the posters also fell short of anything presentable.

The week was not lost, however! Today I did get the opportunity to go up to the fifth floor and tour the labs on the east side of the building. Kathleen and I were able to find two prime locations that we deem suitable for an SAA. I was also able to interview a lab tech that works in the breast cancer unit there on the fifth floor. Getting these interviews has proven to be more of a painstaking task than I originally had anticipated when I first hatched this crazy idea to interview the labs. It seems to be paying off however since the information we are gathering is proving to be useful. In fact, after asking one of the lab techs if their lab had any mercury thermometers (which is on of the questions on the survey), they found one a few days later and handed it over the Kathleen so that we could dispose of it properly.

That pretty much sums up my week as far as being an intern goes. I hope you were able to find something amusing or even mildly interesting while reading. To hold you over until next week. I have something you can check out. If you have Spotify, you should check out their playlist called "Folksy Covers". It's very nice music and has covers of songs both new and old. Very good station. Well, see yall next week!

Spring 2016 Post 4: Playing in the labs

Hello all, and welcome back to my blog, where I shall tell you all about the woos and woes of my week at TGen. I would first like to start off with a woo. I got a giant bag of peanut butter filled m&m's for my office. I hide them in my super secret food drawer with the rest of my super secret food. The reason it's super secret you ask? Well, that's simple. First off, I don't want people to know where all the good food is, this way they can't steal it; and secondly, I'm not sure if were allowed to store food in our office and at this point, I'm too afraid to ask. Anyways let's get to some real business.

This week I got to spend more time going through the labs interviewing the researchers about their lab practices and sustainability efforts. I was only able to interview two scientists this week, both of wich work in the pancreatic cancer unit. This leaves me with one more lab to interview (I think) on the east side of floor four. I'm not entirely sure if we're going to interview the labs on the third floor or the west side of floor four yet, but I hope we do. The more information we get the better.

Also in regards to strolling through the labs, Kathleen and I scoped out some potential spots that we hope to designate as an SAA (Satellite Accumulation Area). This is just a place where all the scientists can place their chemical waste so that facilities can come through and take it away without bothering the researchers or accidently taking the wrong stuff. Apparently this happens frequently and it's a big problem. In facilities defense, it's hard to tell what's waste and what's not in some of those labs.

Another thing that we noticed during our stroll through the labs is that some of the researchers need to be educated on some basic lab practices, such as what qualifies as bio-hazard waste and belongs in the red bags vs what is not and can be placed in the normal trash bags. Some other lessons would be about cleaning up your workspace and what should be stored in a fume hood. I find it amazing that some of the scientists don't know these things. To help them learn, Kathleen and I are going to make posters with big text and whimsical pictures to help illustrate the point. I think this is going to be a fun project.

I made great progress this week on the hunt for SDS's aswell. I think I only have about 25 chemicals left that I need to find information on before I officially declare that part of the project done. We'll see what happens though with all these other projects coming up. If I get to spend more time in the labs next week conducting interviews and doing inspections it might not get done for another week. I personally just want to get it done.

Well, that's pretty much all I have for y'all this week. Till next time.

Spring 2016 Post 3: Progress, woooooo!!!!!!

Progress has been made this week in regards to my internship. The first success of the week was getting all the chemicals that I logged last week documented in an Excell spreadsheet. Now the real hard part of the project comes into play. I have to find the SDS (Safety Data Sheet) for each of the chemicals and list in the spreadsheet the primary hazards of the chemical, the secondary hazards of the chemical, the CAS number, and if there is even an SDS available that goes with the chemical. This is a lot harder than I thought since the vast majority of these chemicals are over 10 years old. I even found one container that was from 1986. The fact that these chemicals are so old makes it hard to find information on some of them due to the company selling out to other companies, chemicals no longer being produced, new formulas for the chemicals, or any other assortment of reasons. I've got about a quarter of the way through the list so far this week. Hopefully, I will be able to finish it on Tuesday.

The second success of the week happened today. I finally got the opportunity to go into the labs and interview one of the most important researchers that works in the brain tumor unit at TGen. The interview consisted of 14 questions, that I came up with, in order to evaluate what kind of lab practices are done in the different labs at TGen. We intend to use this information to help us develop ways in which we can make the labs more sustainable and safe while at the same time not hindering lab work. Next week I have three more labs to interview and then I get to start analyzing the information that we collected from them.

That is pretty much everything I have to report for this week. Like always, ide like to leave you with something. This week my mentor at TGen shared a few links with me about chemical safety and why it is important. I would now like to share those links with you. If anything, at least, check out the last two links. the second link is a video about an accident that happened in a school and the last link is a video that is just unbelievable if you like explosions. They are all worth a look though.

http://www.csb.gov/

http://www.csb.gov/videos/after-the-rainbow/

Jet Fuel Plant Explosion video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KuGizBjDXo

Spring 2016 post 2: All the chemicals!!!

This week for my internship at TGen I got to do something pretty cool. I got to go down to the chemical and biological disposal room of the facility. It is down there is where all the excess chemicals are stored that the labs no longer use and need to be disposed of. It wasn't until today that I found out just how much goes to waste in research in regards to chemicals. I kid you not, there were bottles of chemicals down there that weren't even opened. Some of these chemicals were still in their original packaging for crying out loud! Most of the other containers were only half used. I'm pretty sure there was only a small handful of containers that were reasonably empty with probably less than half a milligram of powder left in the jar. Anyways, I spent three hours in that room cataloging all the chemicals that were down there so that we could find a way to repurpose them or find another lab that can use them instead of just tossing them out. I'll say it one more time just to get the point across. I spent three hours down in that room cataloging all the chemicals that the labs wanted to throw out for any number of reasons. 3 hours worth of cataloging chemicals!!! That's how many there were! My goal for next week is to take the notes I took from cataloging and make a spreadsheet with all the chemicals down there listed so that the scientists in the labs can first go collect these unused chemicals for their research before buying new chemicals. We hope this will help TGen save some money by not having to pay as much to have so many toxic chemicals picked up on a weekly, as well as help save some of the scientists grant money for their research. This is just the beginning of a project in a long line of projects that we hope to accomplish in order to make TGen a better place.

Anyways, I would hate to leave you hanging without anything cool or even mildly interesting so here is a link to a video about cloning your dog. It's pretty cool stuff so go check it out! Till next time!

http://www.techinsider.io/clone-dog-korea-sooam-2015-8

Spring 2016 week 1: SO IT BEGINS!!!

Hello everyone and welcome back to another semester and welcome back to my blog. If you're a first time viewer, than thank you and I hope you enjoy. This semester I am interning at TGen (Translational Genomic Research Institute). TGen is a research center in Phoenix that mostly does cancer research as well as some neurological research. If you would like to know more about TGen here is a link to their website. 

https://www.tgen.org/

What I will be doing there this semester is assisting the safety and compliance department in finding ways to help make the labs at TGen more sustainable, eco-friendly, and ultimately a safer place to work. This week was the start of my internship. The first day was mostly dedicated to getting me settled into my space and introducing me to the people that I will be working with. I also got to attend a board meeting (which was kind of intimidating) where we talked about what is going on in the company. Next meeting I am expected to present my "wins" for the month, which is pretty much just what I have accomplished, and my goals for the next month. Hopefully I’ll have some stellar progress to present so that I can wow the board. After hanging out at TGen for only a couple days I can already tell that this is going to be such a fun internship and that I’m really going to enjoy myself.