Weeks 15 & 16: Enmodes and Finals

All of this first week was spent studying for exams the next week and preparing for our final Enmodes presentations this Friday. We all had to stay late at AIB Thursday night to practice our presentations with Haley and Dr. Wasser and add finishing touches to them. Thankfully, Dr. Wasser bought us pizza too so it was all good. Then on Friday, we had our final presentations with Enmodes and I thought all three groups did a really great job. The people at Enmodes were kind enough to show us around their facilities, giving us a tour of a few of their labs. They were so open to hearing all of our ideas and seemed to really like some of them! They asked us questions and gave us helpful feedback as well as constructive criticism. Even though, as a BIMS student, I felt like I couldn't contribute that much to the project, which was mostly engineering-based, it was still an awesome project to be a part of and be able to present our ideas to a real company in the medical field. Oh, I also had a pharmacology presentation this week. We got to choose our own topics and I did mine on the psychedelic drug ayahuasca. I get really nervous about public speaking but the presentation went a lot better than I thought it would!

The next week was finals week aka hell week. I had a 3rd physiology exam on Monday, pharmacology final on Tuesday, physiology lab exam on Wednesday, and physiology final on Thursday. I think I spent more time at AIB than I did at my host family's house this week and probably only survived this week because of the endless free coffee kindly provided by AIB's student workers. It really sucked not being able to enjoy our last week in Bonn because of the constant studying and it was a stressful week to say the least. I was so relieved by the end of the week I just wanted to sleep forever. 

We ended finals week with a lovely visit to Remagen on Friday, where we we were given a tour of the Peace Museum by its owner and former mayor of Remagen, Hans Peter Kurten. It was amazing to be given a tour by Hans because he had served in WWII and is, as Dr. Wasser says, "a living piece of history." His stories were absolutely captivating. We also learned about the Ludendorff Bridge (also called die Brucken von Remagen), which served a crucial role in helping the Allies in WWII after it was captured by the US. Later that night, all the students gathered at the old AIB for a final farewell party, where the food was delicious, the music was great, and the company was even better. Almost everyone was joined by their host families and I was so glad my host mom could make it! We ended the night going out to a couple of bars for a few drinks.