05 Jul Kaila Rebolledo unda – UCSD George lab – Week 4

Hello everybody, my name is Welcome, and welcome back to my pintern vlog. This is week 4 of my internship in the George Lab at UCSD. 

MONDAY 06-29-26

This week was strange as two of our mentors took a week off on vacation, so I spent this morning with Selene. I began my mouse clicking with my beautiful little clicker while Stella and Selene went off on a little adventure to get the microscope set up

When they came back, they returned with a few goodies from Target, and after a little chocolate pastry-filled breakfast, we continued working on whatever each of our little tasks were. 

After a small lunch break, Selene took us on a little adventure across campus to see a microscope. This is the microscope that photographed the brains that I have been working with, so I was pretty excited to see it. But science has its bumps along the way, and while we were there, we struggled to shoot the little light sheet from the right (they use the light to go through all the layers) 

While Selene tried to do some troubleshooting with the microscope, Stella and I did some very important work of customizing a glove to look like Selene. We gave it to her, and now the glove Selene sits on top of her desk with all her other goodies. 

our gift

TUESDAY 06-30-26

This morning I was able to start on brains while Stella was able to help Selene set up for the ELISA test. 

For the ELISA test, we spun a bunch of blood samples from the mice to test nicotine levels. The first step was in charge and handling, spinning, and marking down which blood samples we used. 

We had to wait an hour in this next step of the process, and Selene gave Stella and me a bunch of pipettes to practice with.

When this hour was over, Selene did this next step, and we got to watch the little blood samples turn different colors right in front of our eyes. Which, in my opinion, is pretty cool.

She finished off a few steps and then put it inside the computer, which would then put into numbers what we just measured.  

When the tests were done, it was just about time for lunch, so we took that, and when we came back, the day was spent doing some individual work, and I did some brain things, and Selene took Stella and me to Jamba Juice because we had been counting down the days till the campus Jamba Juice opened. 

WEDNESDAY 07-01-26 

This morning I did my usual job of coming into the wet lab at Skaggs and working on some brains. Today I had some funny news to tell Selene, though. While the other girls and I were outside, they started seeing shapes in the clouds, but all I could see were the brain layers and how to line them up. 

After lunch, though me and stella got to a different lab and got to watch some brain punching. The brain punching is when they slice a brain really thin and then punch little circles out of the brain to be investigated. 

This process was really cool to watch as it looked so delicate to watch. We also got the chance to shadow this grad student as he was making this chemical. While working on it, he told us that last week, while Stella and I were cleaning and listening to music, he heard us play a little Shop of Horrors, and that he was in that play not too long ago. 

Me and I had a fun time seeing all the different shapes we could see in the brains.

Something hit me while working in this second lab. Most of everyone that I have seen are, in fact, women in STEM, and something even better, most everyone is from a foreign country. Something about realizing this made me quite happy.

THURSDAY 07-02-27 

As the morning routine has become, I got to work on brains, and at this point I’m enjoying it a lot. It’s something I can do, and at the end, when everything is lined up, it’s satisfying. 

After the lunch break me and stella followed Selene to the microscope once again. One of the light lasers had broken, so the plan was to see if they could use one laser to scan a brain. So the night before, Selene brought DF3 to re-scan… my nemesis… words cannot express how much I hate this one specific brain. But I did get to hold it. We ended the day off with some Jamba Juice.

FRIDAY 07-03-26

Today we all had a holiday from the lab, so we met up with another Pintern, Izzy, and headed off to the beach. It was really nice to talk to her and get to know her better. We rode a roller coaster and headed home, where we went on a boba run. Liliana, Izzy, and Jennie (our host mum) went to a store and got some of the best mango sticky rice of my entire life. 

SATURDAY 07-04-26

Happy Fourth of July! After seeing how crowded the beach was the day before, we decided a stay-at-home day would be the best. We went to a local 5 Below, got some craft stuff, and sat outside all together making art. Belle manned the grill and made some amazing burgers before we headed off to watch the fireworks.