I have been starting every post with an apology lately. It has been a year since I joined iGEM- another cycle has since begun and I am still reluctant to blog about it. However, we had a general meeting last night and because they are actually starting lab work now, it reminded me so much of my own experience.
I heard about iGEM from Hojeong aka Crazy Cat, so we attended the introductory talk given by Prof. Chow. My first impression was that it was too incredible. Undergrad students manipulating DNA?! I had to give this a shot. The meetings and tutorials were...intimidating. Hojeong and I felt like two dumbasses in a room of smart kids. We were desperate to learn and terrified of being kicked out of the team (a totally baseless fear). I remember the two of us sitting in my room back to back, trying to come up with a project proposal. We came up with something to do with thirdhand smoke degradation but it went to a dead end. It was good though, I believe that was my first exposure to searching and reading research papers.
On the first day of lab training, we had plans for dinner with the other Jji jjis since the lab closes at 5.30pm. Our lab trainer, Cruellar; let us off early since there was not much we could do that day and scheduled a meeting late in the afternoon. While we were waiting in the learning commons, he informed us that he was being held up in the lab and that the meeting had to be delayed. And so we were forced to cancel our dinner plans. That was when I realised how our summer was going to be- and from then on I never dared to confirm any plans with anyone.
I surprised myself with my enthusiasm for lab work (where does that spirit go when I need to study??!). I never procrastinate if I have an experiment to do, and I can only wish the same can be said for the other areas of my life. It is way more satisfying to me to work on an actual project where you get physical results compared to studying for a test and getting a mere grade. I derive a weird sense of satisfaction working in the lab. Time seems to fly by and I finally understood how people could possibly skip meals for work. I believe that summer was the most enjoyable period for me since coming to HKUST. After the summer term, attending classes was so dull and such a pain, especially since we were running from the lab to lectures and vice versa.
The unfulfilled plan.
I was initially in Group 5, which was basically a redundant group because we were working on the lysis module, which we can never do experimentally in the lab due to biological safety concerns. Once we confirmed the proposal for that module, the group was disbanded and I was allocated to Group 1. By the end of summer we had to prioritize our time and so we were put into another group to help. And so there was this running joke that whichever group I joined would eventually be disbanded. =.=
The day before wiki freeze, most people were only just done with midterms so there was a lot of last-minute uploading, proofreading, tweaking... We pulled 16 hours in the library overnight and were smelly and so disorientated that morning. The last few of us who survived up to the deadline were freaking out so bad because I was proofreading the last last-minute page (which no one else thought was worth doing, which in hindsight, may have been true), and we were trying and failing to log onto the site for half an hour just before the deadline. I had the best sleep of my life that day- Melody said I was happily snoring away in broad daylight. 
As Chloe put it, 'The Six Survivors'
Our wiki:
http://2014.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong_HKUST
iGEM took up a whole lot of time and a lot of sweat and some tears were shed over it; but it was the best experience for an inexperienced dumbdumb like me. To be able to work with peers semi-independently and with all the freedom in performing experiments made it worth it. Also, like I mentioned before, it was nice getting to know weirdos similar to oneself. After being cramped up together in the MBMS lab for months, you start to know your teammates much more than you ever want....
I miss all the chaos, the funky LB smell that greets you as you enter, the daily battle of booking machines and gel tanks, fighting with the Side Project Mafia, and yelling in different languages that is iGEM lab.
*atm*
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