Week 2 with Dr. Zheng

Things thus far have been quite interesting with Dr. Zheng. Since about the first week of the internship period, Dr Zheng and I have been pushing the U of A to provide me with a "NetID," which is prerequisite to attaining lab training and safety certification. It wasn't until about Friday last week that I finally received my UA ID, and just this weekend I've worked hard to complete the online safety training course.

Other than that bureaucratic snafu, that isn't to say I've had nothing to do in the interim. Last week I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Renee Corrales, who is a computational chemist. I was surprised by how much I understood when he talked about the computer infrastructure responsible for running chemistry calculations at the UA. It was an even bigger surprise to hear that I would be working with a time-dependent version of Schrodinger's equation to calculate electron densities in complex molecules. Of course, the equations are terribly cumbersome and have already been worked out by others, but perhaps when Dr. Corrales mentioned it, he didn't expect me to know what he was talking about. Well, thanks to Mr Lee and BASIS, I did.

Today is the day I should be beginning my lab work under Dr. Zheng. As I've mentioned in my previous post, it will be all about deciphering esoteric chemistry recipes and putting together organic compounds. Having gone over some chemistry manuals and recipes already, I'm really reminded of how fun chemistry was in 9th and 10th grade. It looks like that Chemistry here is mostly the same as Chemistry at BASIS, except there are tons of more math (ie fun) and memorizing (ie not so fun). Safety is also quite a large concern here at the UA labs, and there are extensive protocols to do with everything from the moment one begins an experiment to the moment one leaves the laboratory. I wasn't terribly happy with the redundancy of the safety test, but such is the situation.

By Thursday, I should have figured out how to get a copy of Fedora 11 to dual-boot on my quad-core studio computer, which, as I am told, is the most optimum platform for launching distributed calculations at the UA. I will have my second meeting with Dr. Corrales on Thursday. And by the end of the week, I should have some legitimate lab work done with Dr. Zheng and a truer sense of what my life is going to look like for the next 9 weeks.

In the interests of providing a comprehensive account of what my life away from BASIS is like thus far, I can't help but mention that I've had fantastic opportunities to meet people at the Rialto and continue work at Arizona University Recordings. Because I'm very often at the UA now, I have been given the opportunity to meet Jim Blackwood, the audio engineer most famously responsible for engineering KXCI and mixing the band Iron & Wine. Depending on my luck, he may be willing to pick me up as an intern during my off-hours from the lab and I may be able to observe him/get him coffee. On the other hand, I haven't really been partying/doing anything the teenager is required to do upon emancipation. It has all been hard work at the Rialto, at Arizona University Recoridngs, and Dr. Zheng. And, so far, I'm completely happy with that.