The Power of Knowledge

I went to bed early last night hoping that I would wake up with a lot of energy for my first day of class and although I did get more sleep I woke up with zero energy. I got out of bed fighting to keep my eyes open and took a shower which thankfully helped wake me up. I got ready and headed downstairs to have some breakfast with some of the girls from my house.

The floor my class is on

After breakfast, which I ate in a rush to get to class before the start time, I met up with some of my housemates who were also in the Contagion program and we walked together to class. We found our room easily and were welcomed by Dr. Fineschi, our instructor, and Dawn, the TA in charge of our lab. Both Dawn and Dr. Fineschi had a great energy about them and they came off as very approachable. They were very energetic and seemed genuinely excited to teach us. To begin class, they introduced themselves, then had us introduce ourselves, with the added twist of memorizing and repeating everyone’s name.

After spending only around 30 minutes in class, Dr. Fineschi took us down to a lab safety orientation. The orientation lasted around two hours and taught us how to properly handle all of the different equipment in the lab. At the end of the presentation, our new knowledge was tested with a Kahoot quiz. Kahoot was really fun because rather than just answering a list of questions we competed with each other to see who can get the right answers the fastest. Even though it is a quiz it seems more like a game. As the safety orientation came to an end, Dr. Fineschi let us know we had an hour and a half break before class would begin again.

Mansueto Library

In the break I had, I went to lunch at Baker with Cecilia and Adela and then later headed to Mansueto Library with my housemates, Jessica, Julia, and Dana. Mansueto was really beautiful but eerily quiet. Jessica, Julia, Dana, and I were all in the same course so we decided to stay there for a while to get some work done before heading back.

In our first lecture today, Dr. Fineschi talked about the history and impact of infectious diseases. The main lesson of the lecture was the importance of knowledge. Now scientists can learn all ways to fight the organisms that cause disease and prevent them from spreading but not that long ago most people didn’t even know what caused diseases. It was evenly commonly believed that diseases were caused by “bad air.” Most of class was spent discussing different scientists and their discoveries that developed into the knowledge of the immune system we have today.

My lab station set up

For the second part of class, we moved to the lab room and began our first lab of the program. Lab today was directed towards getting us comfortable with lab protocols and working on technique with some lab equipment. Several people in my class already had vast lab experience so I felt behind but Dawn assured us that they are aware they have students with different levels of experience and we should ask her questions about anything that we have trouble understanding.

The rest of my night consisted of taking notes and reviewing background information in order to be ready for class tomorrow. Although all the material is difficult to understand, I find it really interesting learning about the relationship between antibiotics and bacteria. I have never learned in such a hands-on way and I am really excited to continue learning more tomorrow.