spring 2008 is officially over. i haven't slept in 24 hours, many thanks to starbucks for making copious amount of caffeine available for my consumption. without it, i would have surely given into my sleepiness, although it really really sucks having to pay like $6 to make darn sure i won't be taking any naps (but then again, it's better to see it as a $6 investment towards a brighter future). it would have been nice if my last final had been a breeze. maybe it was a combination of my zombie-like state of consciousness, the FL$)(&SDFJH#$@(* numbers/letters/greek letters/equations/rules, etc... i had to learn and keep straight what stands for what and when you use this or do this or that etc etc ... but yeah, it all feels very ... eh. i spent 2.75 hours squeezing every last drop of juice in my brain cells trying to figure those annoying last questions.
although i should have my head buried in my notes right now, it's kinda fun being all drugged up on caffeine and listening to sappy love songs, like david cook's heart-stirring rendition of mariah carey's always be my baby ... but really, even if i didnt have caffeine running through my veins, i'd still say this song is hot.
setting up the gas chamber, which took a while thanks to all the different-sized tubing and not being sure what went where, etc ... and let me tell you, it's not fun messing around with gas chambers, especially when the gas (isoflurane) smells CRAZY
waiting for the rats to go under (while they're succumbing to the gas, they stagger around like they're drunk and start pooping all over the place)
injecting potassium chloride into their hearts
and then we harvested the sensors that had been implanted 5 weeks earlier, which meant we had to cut out sections of their skin. i actually jumped when the rat I was cutting into twitched ... SCARY it was probably a nerve there or something, because it kept twitching whenever i touched the same spot ... eeeeee
it wasn't nearly as bad as i'd imagined ... i thought there would be lots of blood and guts all over the tables, but thankfully there wasn't. the worst part about it all was just inhaling the nasty gas and the fumes from the formaldehyde, which really irritated my throat and eyes. i'm also thankful there wasn't a need to chop their heads off with a guillotine. amy told me the heads still blink and the body still moves after they've been decapitated, and i could definitely hold off on seeing that happen.
