ChAP beginnings

I’m beginning to put together a protocol for the ChAP I have to do like I’ve talked about before. We have an old lab protocol for it but it contains a lot of things that I don’t need to do and some things that I need to do aren’t on there so I have to figure out what I need to do. Once I put together a protocol, I’ll send it to the grad student that just left and has done a lot of ChAPs before to make sure that I have everything right. 

Writing this protocol is a unique experience for me and it’s kind of cool. Every other lab experience I’ve ever had, whether it be in general chemistry lab in high school or now in an actual research lab, I’ve had a procedure handed to me and all I’ve ever had to do is follow it and do exactly what it says. This is a bit different since I need to figure out what I have to do and make sure that my procedure actually completes the task. It’s a little bit intimidating to do this for the first time but this is what professional researchers do. It’ll be a big learning experience both in that I will learn the science behind what I’m doing and that I’ll learn a lot about the scientific process. I think this will also make me feel like I’m developing more as a scientist. Before, I’ve been doing pretty basic stuff but writing and performing this ChAP experiment is more of a challenge. I’m looking forward to it.