Monday (June 21st) I had my first day of work! It was really exciting :) As before mentioned I had previously met quite a few people there and was shown where to go so that took a lot of the nerves away. Due to school being out during the summer here there is not a whole ton going on in the lab so it is a little slow and on top of that there was a school wide meeting that all of the staff had to be there was hardly anyone around. Niall (my supervisor) put one of the grad students (Sarah) in charge of me and the other intern (Malinda). I spent the first few hours doing the homework that Niall gave me to do (yes... I got homework) and it was really slow! Later in the afternoon I observed/minimumly helped Sarah with her research project. She showed me how they use an ultra sound machine (worth 10k+ Euro) to look at the brachial artery (artery in the upper arm) to look for signs of heart and artery disease. It was really cool!
Tuesday (June 22nd) I spent the morning studying again but luckily Sarah saved me by introducing me to Paula who was doing a few tests for her research. Once again my role was minimal in helping Paula I simply clicked a few buttons on the computer but it was better than sitting at that desk all day! Paula had an athlete do an interval bike test and looking at lactate levels among other things. I am finding that I really like research and all of the proceedures. Granted I've only been here two days but even back in school I thought reading research papers was exciting. But now seeing it in action is pretty cool. The grad students seem to be pretty laid back and for the most part are willing to show/teach me things in their free time. Niall is pretty cool too... :) everyone here loves him. He took an hour out of his extremely busy day to go over a lecture for us on the mechanisms for heart disease.
Wednesday (June 23rd) Nothing much occured today. Javier who works in the tech office showed us how to callibrate the metabolic cart. Aka the machine where you do exercise testing. Probably the longest day ever!
Thursday (June 24th) Today was pretty cool. I finally met the other Intern MaLinda. She seems really nice. She is from Arizona and is not very happy with this internship. She actually has no interest in exercise science but in nueroscience and psychology. So why did she end up here? Because the EUSA program has a lot of ... lets say glitches and they wouldn't change her location at all. Oh well... it's only 6 weeks and like $5000 right?
Anyway, so this morning MaLinda and I went over to to the Heart Smart program that is run here on campus. Basically this a program designed to help recovery patients that have had heart attacks, surgery's or other proceedures done on their heart learn about taking care of themselves and exercising. They get together 2x's a week to exercise together. The group is about 60-70 now and they are some of the most fun Irish people I have met! It's as the local's would say "good craic" and no I don't mean the drug crack. Craic is a slang term that is used every where here! and no one know's exactly what it means. Expect loosely translated "a good laugh/time" and normally use it to refer to their weekends in the pub but on other occassions as well. So I basically stood around and watched old people suffer as they exercise :) muaw ha ha ha... ok jk I talked to them, made sure they were feeling alright and did a lot of slagging. Slagging is another Irish slang word meaning teasing. They Irish love to tease and you can tease them right back! It's pretty fun to hear them banter amongst themselves as they're puffing away on the treadmill or whatever.
Afterwards I sat in a pilot meeting (pilot meaning trial run) on Lorraine's research project. In the afternoon Javier showed us (meaning MaLinda and I) how to do a VO2 max test. The purpose of the test is to measure fitness level as defined by your bodies capacity to use oxygen during maximal exercise. It is pretty intense because they have you running about 12k/h up a hill. And guess who the subject? ME! I really enjoy them actually and I got to see that since the last test I did I actually improved my fitness level a little bit. Which is cool. After the test we met with Niall again for another lecture.
Friday (June 25th) Today was really really slow. I did nothing besides sit in with Sioban as she worked on a client. Sioban (pronounced Shavon) is an athletic therapist, or America's equivalent to an athletic trainer. The athlete was a futball player and had been having back problems. She is really good, and it was cool to watch her work. After working with him she gave my shin a death massage because I had complained about shin splints. I was sore for like 5 days afterward! Ugh!
TTFN
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