my training...

Past few days were pretty exhausting. Never ending workload in the lab is killing me (the bloody plasmids I transformed wouldn't form colonies, damn those lowlives). I haven't even started reading the reference books I borrowed from my uni's library last Sunday.

Today, I feel like blogging about what I do for my current training program (so that you guys would stop asking me what do I actually do for my industrial training).

Okay, to start off, I am currently doing my practical in a laboratory which is generally on molecular cloning. What is molecular cloning, you ask? Heck, I don't really know, but from what I see here everyone's doing DNA recombinant for bacterial cells.

Now, the DNA recombinant thing. Basically, what I'm actually learning from the phD and Masters students here are mostly on how to extract plasmid or genomic contents from a desired cell, run several tests to confirm the DNA, culture some host cells, and transform the host cells by intergrating the plasmid or genomic composition I've extracted into them. That's 'basically'. In between, I've been learning quite a few tips on handling several bioequipment and machines I've never laid my hands on before, and this is really good hands-on experience for me.

Not that it's all fun though. I need to send in a schedule of my daily activities to my supervisor every Friday, and I had to spend countless hours doing research and making notes because genetics isn't really what I do back in my uni. However, I believe it's worth it, and definitely useful when I start my final year thesis project next semester. Besides, it's only a 2-month stint. And definitely safer than some coursemates of mine who are checking HIV positive blood samples for training *gasp*.

So there you have it, my industrial training.

Oh btw, I wanna share something funny. A coursemate of mine; who is undergoing training too, is doing data entry instead (what the hell?). I laughed like mad when I hear that. I wonder what is he going to write about when passing up the training report.