After half-time

My second academic year at Columbia University ended more than a month ago (two more to go), and though I was not all that certain about my performance towards its close, in the end I did much better than I had expected: I got my name on the Dean’s List again.

My second academic year at Columbia University ended more than a month ago (two more to go), and though I was not all that certain about my performance towards its close, in the end I did much better than I had expected: I got my name on the Dean’s List again.

I was happy that my best grade was, somewhat paradoxically, in biology – perhaps the most difficult pre-med course at our school. So now I can hopefully manage all the rest that is ahead – and there’s quite a lot. But for now, I’m brimming with summer experiences.

As I wrote in my previous post, I obtained the SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) grant this year, thanks to which I can spend eight hours of every business day in the lab with my rats over the current two month period. My role is changing from the “mere” assistant in others’ experiments; this time, I’m running my own experiment. It has two parts – a behavioral one and an analytical one. First I teach the rats to pull a lever for reward (food); the experimental group should develop such a strong habit that it will pull the lever just out of ‘inertia’ (not hunger) after 20 days – unlike the control group, which should only engage in this activity with the food motivation. In the analytical section, the rats will be killed, and then I’ll examine changes in the nervous tissues of specific brain regions between the two groups, with and without the habit. I have to report about my research regularly all the time, and I also hear many enriching lectures – perhaps the most interesting and inspiring one came courtesy of Martin Chalfie, who described his life and path to the Nobel Prize, which he won for the discovery of the green fluorescent protein in 2008.

Talking about Nobel Prize laureates: I do my research at the New York Psychiatric Institute (which collaborates with Columbia University), and walking its corridors I sometimes meet Eric Kandel who received the prestigious award in 2000 for neuroscience research into memory. Frankly, it would be strange not to meet someone like him at our school. 79 Nobel laureates worked at the Columbia University throughout its history. (This is one of the many curious facts with which I as a guide regularly amaze the visitors to our university campus.)

Aside from working, I try to gain new experiences in New York, since I finally have some time to do so on holidays. A few of my Czech friends visited me here during the last month (as they did during the academic year), and I love to guide them through the campus. This metropolis also offers truckloads of free admission events open to the general public. So I went to two open-air showings of French movies, visited several museums, and I plan on going to see a Shakespeare play in the park. It’s nice to see how actively Americans follow the current Euro Cup soccer, with live broadcasts on screen at almost any eating establishment in Manhattan (hence the inspiration for this post’s heading). The East Coast weather is getting into true summer gear, so I may even be able to see one of the nearby beaches. And I can’t wait to fly back home for at least a month in August.

Let me conclude my post today with another random curious fact about our campus: The first uranium atom was split in one of our university buildings (Pupin) in 1939 – which ultimately led to the fabled Manhattan Project. It started in the underground corridors of Columbia University, a greater part of which is still closed to the public due to the potential leakage of radioactivity. In particular, the walls of the room that houses the first ever particle accelerator are regularly, once a year, painted with a thick layer of lead paint. As a result, it’s still safe to be around the campus. (By the way, the major reduction of crime rate in the adjacent Harlem neighborhood in recent years helped as well.)

Stav po prvním poločase

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