Adventures in Germany: Week 13

Last week, I went to the Wombats concert and let me tell you I am still on a high from that night.  This has been very convenient since this past week has been my hell week academically.  Let's start at the very beginning, shall we?  On Sunday, I went to my new study place, the Starbucks near Munsterplatz, and finished my Pharmacology project that was due on Monday.  I was very relieved to have finished it but I couldn't help shake the feeling that I hadn't done a good enough job.  However, I couldn't let those worries carry over to the next day when I had to present my final project.  Compared to other people, my project was not very exciting or interesting, so I had to do a good job being a charismatic presenter.  Unfortunately, when I got up to present, I messed up literally the very first slide, and from then on out I was the definition of a hot mess.  Thankfully, I quickly finished and sat down because I couldn't bear having to be up there any longer.  Hopefully Dr. Fajt won't grade my presentation skills too harshly, but I am not holding my breath.  After finishing, I got to watch my other group member's present, and I felt a lot better because I was just relieved to be done with the whole thing.  On Tuesday I got a little break as we had to watch the other half of the class present, so I was pretty stress-free.  

Wednesday was the beginning of crunch-time for our Enmodes project.  My team, Rafael, was pretty well set up at the start, as our Powerpoint slides were pretty much done.  However, once Dr. Wasser saw our slides for the first time, we had to pretty much change everything about all the slides.  Thankfully, Lois and Izzie had done a great job with the Solidworks portion of our presentation, so once those images were embedded to our presentation the whole thing looked much better.  I really felt like on Wednesday we didn't have much left to do so I felt like as a whole I wasted a crap ton of time doing nothing.  When I wasn't busy, I was able to finish my final draft for the third major writing assignment for VIBS 311 which was a relief.  OH!  I almost forgot that I was able to register for classes for the upcoming fall semester.  It was a very surreal feeling as this was the last time I will ever register for classes at Texas A&M.  I registered for Immunology, Intro to Sociology, Urban Health Systems Planning, Microbiology, and the other BIMS writing elective.  A total of 15 hours which kind've sucks for my last semester but it means I will graduate this December!  Also, I was able to get into all my classes I wanted on the first try, which has NEVER happened to me before.  I was hella blessed.  Wednesday afternoon, we presented our slides to Dr. Wasser for the second time but we still had to change around some of our slides.  I was getting annoyed by this point, but thankfully they served us pizza for dinner so I was feeling better.  These past week during our downtime I've gotten good at ping pong, as that has become our group's favorite activity.  Fortunately, none of the groups had to stay late on Wednesday to work on Enmodes so my group got to leave around 8 pm that night.  

Thursday, however, was a different story all together.  Truly the definition of hell day had begun.  Once I got to the AIB at 9 am, we quickly began running over our presentation over and over again.  However, we couldn't present to Dr. Wasser until noon which was kind've annoying but it was whatever.  Once we got into the room with him, we quickly realized we had a lot to improve which was kind've depressing.  However, none of the problems were world-enders so we quickly got to work to fix them all.  We quickly corrected our mistakes, however the Donatello group was inside with Dr. Wasser, and he kept them in there for over 2.5 hours!  None of us could believe it was taking this long and we were scared something bad happened while they were in there.  When they finally were finished, the Michelangelo presented and they finished pretty quickly.  By this point, it was already dinner time.  Don't tell my how much time we had wasted this day, because trust me we were very aware.  This time, the AIB provided us Ethiopian food for dinner which was actually pretty good and filling.  However, this is where things got heated.  By this point all of the groups had presented once and it was already about 9:00 pm.  We were all pissed the day had moved this slow, and all of us were anxious we were gonna be staying late to finish.  Thankfully, our group got to go in first.  This time we presented was EASILY the best our group had done, and Dr. Wasser and Alexa agreed they didn't need to see us again, but then they said it wouldn't hurt to see us again. UGHHHH!!! We were so pissed because we didn't to wait another 2-3 hours to present.  Since the mistakes we made were all minuscule, we asked if we could present immediately in which we did.  I don't think we did any better the 2nd time but they all agreed that they knew we could do it so they let us leave.  The other groups were SO pissed at us for going twice in a row, but I told them if they were in our position they would've easily done the same thing as us.  So our group got to go home by 11:00 pm which was a relief.  I felt bad for the Michelangelo group because they had to stay til 1:30 am.  

The next morning we all got up bright and early to meet at the Hofgarten at 8:00 am to start our journey to Aachen where we would present to Enmodes.  Once at the conference room, we were all very anxious and I think we just all wanted to get it over with.  Once the two Enmodes guys arrived, we quickly began.  Rafael was first, and we KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK!! Seriously, that was easily the best our group ever presented and it felt great to accomplish that.  I was so happy, and it was great to watch the other two groups kill it as well!  After we all finished, we went up to answer their questions.  I was feeling good until I got put on the spot to answer TWO questions! UGH!  Of course this happened to me and obviously I dropped the ball hard.  Thankfully, everyone laughed it off at the end and we all got champagne to cheers the end of our long and arduous project!  It was such a great feeling to be done and I was actually really proud of my group.  After drinking a few glasses of champagne, it was time to head to lunch.  We ate a really nice lunch at a nearby restaurant. I got salad, fried potatoes, and grilled wienerschnitzel and hot chocolate for dessert.   It was all great but by this point I was exhausted and ready to head back home.  Unfortunately, we had to make a stop at this biomedical engineering facility in Aachen and that trip felt like it took forever.  Finally, we got back on the bus to head back to Bonn.  Once home, I quickly stripped my suit off because I was completely over wearing that.  After eating a nice dinner with my host family, I had to quickly get dressed again to go out for my friend Nicky's 21st birthday!  We all met up at Taco Bar, our favorite place in Bonn, for the night.  After getting a few drinks and shots in us we headed to a nearby club and danced our hearts out.  At one point, I got so hot that I thought I was going to pass out so I decided to head back for the night.  You can say that I slept really well that night.

Unfortunately, I had to get up pretty early AGAIN because yesterday we had our Charity Day with the AIB.  My group got assigned to help paint a firehouse in Bonn for the day which was a lot of fun! It was fun to paint with everyone and the weather was great so we were able to enjoy lunch with the firefighters outside the station.  Once we all finished, we got to take a ride in the firetruck which was just plain fun.  After we finished, I decided to head back home for the day because I was exhausted.  The past two nights I had probably gotten a combined 8 hours of sleep so I was extremely ready to have a chill night for once.  After finishing season 4 of Breaking Bad I decided to go to sleep.

Today, I got to sleep and hang out with my host family and now I'm on Bonn finishing up my assignments for the upcoming week.  This next week I will be in Berlin and I am so pumped!  I will talk to y'all about that on the next blog post.

Until then, 

Tschuss!