Your Life Begins Outside Your Comfort Zone

"Life begins at the end  of your comfort zone." I am sure that my Dear Readers have seen this phrase before. It is typically used when someone is trying to convince someone else to do something different. Sometimes it is posted like this:

Regardless of how we have been exposed to it, most people identify "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone" as a meaningless cliche.

What we need to remember is that we must go outside of our comfort zone.

Where is my comfort zone?

If we are to go outside of our comfort zone, then we need to know where to begin. Unfortunately, there is not a clear definition of a comfort zone. However, there are a few different versions that I have found in my own life.

1. Your daily routine- everyone has their ways to unwind or get started or eat and whatnot. It is easy to stick to a routine, even when it includes something that is unhealthy.

2. Your relationships- We all have a circle of friends that we associate ourselves with. And as they say, the people you associate with define who you are.

3. Your location- Sometimes we chose to stay in the same place simply because we do not want to remove ourselves from the places and people that we know.

Obviously there are more definitions of a comfort zone, but for time-sake, I will have to move on. However, there is one clear theme amongst these comfort zones: they make use feel happy.

Why is my comfort zone bad if I am happy?

There is a reason it is called our comfort zone. We feel safe and secure in our comfort zone. Everything makes some sort of sense, and we can predict what is coming next. Even if it is not perfect, we know that our lives have structure.

We think that we are happy.

This is one of the greatest mind tricks of all time, and we do it to ourselves.  Because we have convinced ourselves that our lives are good, we do not strive to be better. We do not want to change our way of life losing its consistency. No consistency means no stability which means no security which means no comfort which means no joy.

Even if it would make us happier, we chose to ignore that option. We hide in our routine, our fantasized relationships, or our bedrooms, just to keep ourselves safe. It is frightening that something could be better than what we already know.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. 

We are not as happy as we may think we are, and we know it.

What is true happiness?

I realize that that last statement seemed a bit morbid. I am certainly not saying that any of my Dear Readers are not happy people. What I am saying is that there is something better. We can always find something better.

So what is the absolute best?

Heaven.

Each human being was designed to be with God in Heaven. Our whole lives are meant to bring us to be in union with God, and as a result, in communion with one another. Heaven, our true home, is the ultimate form of happiness. We will not experience Heaven until we move on from this life, but it is indeed possible to experience Heaven in small ways on Earth.

But where is Heaven on Earth?

Outside of your comfort zone.

Why is Heaven outside of our comfort zone?

It is interesting how throughout the Old Testament God calls the Israelites to go elsewhere. I always felt like they were constantly searching for their true home, and I felt bad for them.

Then I realized what was happening. 

Each time God's chosen people came to a place, something amazing happened. Either the walls of Jericho fell or a war was won or food came from the sky.

But it is not just an Old Testament experience. In the New Testament, the phrase, "and Jesus passed by" comes up numerous times, and every single time, a miracle happens. Jesus did not stay in his hometown, his "comfort zone" if you will.

"Amen I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place" ~Luke 4:24

When we go outside of our comfort zone, amazing things are possible. This is mostly because our perceived limitations are no longer present. If we do not have any particular expectations, then we can do as much as we can.

And if we can do anything, then God can do anything.

God is able to work outside of our comfort zone, and because He is working within us, glimpses of Heaven are made present.

My Story

Those you who have been reading know that I like to share why this topic is important to me. So that's what I am doing now.

Outside the Zone

This summer has been extremely transformative for me. I would go in to detail, but it will be less redundant if you go here. Because of the experiences I had with my lab at Notre Dame, I had come to know that I was capable of science, worthy of healthy and meaningful relationships, and a truly beautiful child of God.

None of this would have been possible had I not chased my dreams.

Outside of my comfort zone.

Remember how I listed the three types of comfort zones? When I went to Notre Dame, I thought that the only change I was making was in my location. I thought that because I was still talking to people back in Nashville and sticking to a daily routine that I had only changed where I was having my life experiences.

I thought it was only Notre Dame that made me a better person.

Returning to my Zone

That being said, I was terrified about returning to Belmont. During the week leading up to my move in day, my acid reflux returned, I couldn't sleep, and my anxiety was through the roof. Because of the changes I had made in my life during my REU, I was finally confident. If it was only the location that brought that joy in to my life, then going back to Belmont might change things.

I was terrified I was going to become who I used to be.

I was worried that I would be that girl who used to sit in her gazebo, obsessing over the same situation, being more sassy than necessary, and not caring about people in the way she knew she should.

The past few days of RA training have proven this to be false.

RA Training

When I got back to campus, I did not feel the need to go to any of my usual sentimental locations. Instead, I decided to stay in my new Residence Hall and get to know my staff. I did not hide my passions from the world.

And guess what?

I was accepted by this amazing staff.

We own the awkward "family" photos

No Place or Situation Defines You

Yes, being outside of your comfort zone allows your life to fully begin, but where that happens or how that happens does not define who you are. If that were true, then these experiences and locations would become our new comfort zones.

It is who you become in each new location that defines who you are.

Because I decided to maintain the personality that I had gained from the experience I had this summer, I was able to take this new person in to an old location.

I could go in to how I have already started to feel myself growing within this hall already, but that is unnecessary.

It is ok to go outside of your comfort zone. You may fail, but you will not fail to become greater.

"to live in a manner worthy of the Lord, so as to be fully pleasing, in every good work bearing fruit and growing in the knowledge of God" ~ Colossians 1:10

Why You Have to Follow Your Dreams

Dreams. They are all over the place. We are constantly searching the internet for the meaning of the dream about the hot guy eating an Eggo waffle, trying to succeed at lucid dreaming, and watching movies all about dreams.

Or watching JGL. Whatever floats your boat

However, many would not identify dreams as highly important beyond a movie concept or topic of conversation. 

I am writing this to explain the value of dreams in our lives.

The Evolution of Dreams

I believe the main reason why people do not view dreams as important is because the meaning of a dream has changed over the course of time.

Biblical Times

Back in the day, people were far more literal. When they said "an eye for an eye," they meant it. That being said, dreams were not just some fantastical thought. If someone could see it, then it had to be real somehow.

Thank God Pre-modern times did not have iPhones...

God used dreams to talk to people. They could see a potential future or speak to an angel. Dreams were an experience that people took seriously.

The Old Testament is filled with dreams. In these dreams, God was able to show his prophets what was to pass and tell them what to do. Because Joseph was able to interpret dreams, he went from a prisoner to a powerful man in Egypt. People took dreams seriously, and they were anxious to know exactly was to pass because of these dreams.

Modern Times

We are far less literal today. In our modern society, we search for deeper meaning and focus on the future. Our scientific research is mostly focused on things that cannot be seen by the naked eye, but make the biggest difference in our overall health. The past and present are far less important than our futures.

As a result, dreams, at least the traditional sleeping ones, are seen as our subconscious explaining something to us. God no longer is part of that equation. Because of this, God had to find a new avenue for speaking to us.

So a new method of dreaming came to pass.

These new dreams are our passions. What would have been a message from an angel in Biblical times has turned in to a life goal. This could be a career, a relationship, a home, whatever we could possibly desire really. Once we have succeeded, we feel a sense of peace. This is our way of connecting to God's plan in our day to day lives.

Our dreams are God's message to us.

So we need to live them.

My Story

I never wish to sound "preachy" to my Dear Readers, so I like to put my own story in to the equation. I recently have had the experience of watching my dreams come and go and return, and I believe that this story will prove my point more clearly than quotes and theological discussions.

Ground Level

There have been numerous dreams that have filled my head, but I will only focus on a couple of them to save everyone's time.

My first dream was to do something scientific. Ever since I was a baby, I was around science. My father was a geneticist and my mother was a nutritional scientist. I went to the lab as a child, and my parents even propped me up like this:

Yes. I use this picture for everything. I am adorable.

It is a very good thing that I actually fit in to this dream. I was good at science. I could run the lab when my teachers left, and I found joy in studying on a Friday night. The exact path that I would take with science was unclear, but I knew that I was meant to pursue it.

My second dream involved my second passion: dance. 

My technique was not perfect, but the dream was still valid.

The biggest part of dance is the look. While I never desired to look anorexic, I still wanted to be beautiful. I wanted to look like my entire body was filled with power. If I had power, then I could make my tap dances sound better, and I could make more people watch me. It was a superficial dream, but it was a dream nonetheless.

My third dream was about my relationships with other people, boys included of course. I wanted a base of strong women who loved me for I was and enjoyed hanging out with me. I wanted a strong Catholic man who was able to discuss science and laugh with me and cared about other people, like my daddy and little brothers.

Break Down

Now, I am not saying that God makes these dreams come true easily. If that were the case, then we would never find a connection between Him and the passions that drive our lives. The people in the pre-modern era had to interpret their dreams, and we have to find out how our's will come to pass.

So they have to fail.

The first dream to melt away from my mind was my beauty. This came from a few off hand comments from an ex-boyfriend who said that I was "too fat" to be a good girlfriend, and a few other people who said that I was ugly in middle school. Suddenly I was unable to look in the mirror without noticing my flaws first.

The second dream were my relationships. Due to my insecurity, I thought that every woman I was close to viewed me as second-rate. I thought that if I would contact them anymore that they would be annoyed with me and leave. Some people actually left. As far as boys go, I had gone as far as possible from my "dream man." By the end of this school year, I had wasted two years by being interested in a less spiritual boy who cared more about his own life experience than me as a person and was not all too interested in discussing anything.

The third dream was my scientific ability. It had been a week at Notre Dame, and I had done absolutely nothing to further my project. My PI was constantly reminding me that I was behind, and I felt like I shouldn't be there anymore. I cried every single night because I thought I was losing the one passion that had gotten me to where I was.

But God does not let our dreams go to waste.

Living the Dream

I forgot to mention that going to Notre Dame was one of my dreams when I was younger. I had let that go because Notre Dame is super expensive, and I was not entirely sure if I was going to be accepted anyways. Regardless, I was still a huge fan of the school, and it was a dream come true to be on campus for an entire summer.

Therefore, God was able to work here in this dream to help me see what life was meant to be.

The first dream to come back was my belief in my scientific abilities. It was week 2, and I was given several small things to do in order to make my project move forward. Unlike some of my REU friends, I was essentially independent from day 1 of my work. Sure, my lab buddy and the graduate student helped me along the way, but I still had a lot of my own work to do.

I failed a few times over the summer, and my PI suggested that I did not continue with a certain experiment. Angry that I would not be able to complete my task and live the dream, I went ahead and set it up anyways.

It worked. 

My dream of being a scientist came true.

As I went through the summer, I maintained my friendships from back home. Even though I am admittedly the worst texter, I kept up as best I could with the women from back home at Belmont. It was the first time that I had consistent contact with people. And with girls at that! I felt at peace with my support system.

And my heart started to warm up a little, and I could see my dream coming back.

Boys is a little bit of an odd case. When I got to Notre Dame, I was a complete wreck. Over and over I debating falling back to my old pattern. After all, there weren't any guys that actually were as nice as my brothers and my daddy right? As my self confidence was hovering in the balance, I debating texting the old guy over and over again.

Then I started talking to the guys in my lab.

They were just normal guys, but they were some of the nicest men I had ever met. 

The graduate student would take the blame for literally any mistake I made, and he was always checking up on me. He would occasionally talk about his wife and you could just see his eyes sparkle a little more. Several of the REU students told me that they wished they had a graduate student like him in the lab. 

On the other end was my lab buddy who I spent nearly 200 hours with in our little back room. He was the first to go out of his way to help me, even though he thought I was a little weird at first. I could talk to him about science and Jesus and life, and it was perfectly ok.

I realized that there were good people everywhere, even in a little basement room with poor lighting. No, there was no romance, but I could physically see the kind of men I wanted to be friends with.

My dream came true.

And as I continued to live the vocation that the Lord gave me alongside the people that He had sent me to show me how beautiful humanity was, I started to see the world differently. I believed that I was capable and intelligent and important.

And for the first time in four years, I looked in the mirror and noticed the beautiful things first.

My dream came true.

The Point

My purpose for telling y'all this story is to show you that our dreams can come true. Remember how I didn't apply to Notre Dame because I did not think that that dream was feasible?

This is just like how we can choose to ignore our dreams.

Just because a dream does not look feasible does not mean that it does not have a purpose in your life.

Because I took a chance and applied to Notre Dame for my summer research experience, God was able to bring me to where I needed to go. In this environment, God was able to show me that I truly was meant to pursue research, to have amazing friendships, and that I was beautiful. By living out a small dream that I had chosen to forget, everything fell in to place.

Imagine if Joseph decided to ignore his dream about going back to Mary because he thought it would be too hard. The Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ would have had to go through pregnancy and child rearing all alone. Jesus would not have had a father to build tables with.

People are going to tell you that your dreams are not valid. They are going to say that it doesn't matter if you are successful in some areas because you will never be able to accomplish everything. Dreams are just a wish your heart makes; they don't matter.

Every single one of your dreams matter.

God gives you these dreams so that you can find the happiness that He has created for you.

Thanks to Notre Dame and the Vaughan lab, I was able to find the light in my spirit that I had lost too long ago. While I may not be perfect, I know that I can do anything and I can do better with my life. I have a long way to go as far as being the Christian that I am meant to exemplify, but I know that with God at the head and my dreams burning in my heart, that some day I may see My Father and thank Him for all that He has done.

Give life everything you have.

You deserve it.

Keep dreaming.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" ~Jeremiah 29:11

What I Did This Summer: Lab Experiences

From the looks of my posts this summer, it would not look like I was at a Biology REU. In fact, it looks more like I was in a psychological/theological study performed within the context of a cellular biology lab.

So now that my summer is coming to a close, I will give you Dear Readers the highlight reel. And if that is too long, there is a TLDR (too long didn't read) version at the bottom.

Week 1
Back Corners and Extroverts Do Not Mix

On the first day of bench work, I was given a two hour background lecture on the experiment, and then I was shown my desk. For the next four days I sat in that little corner, scared out of my mind, and staying nearly silent. The other undergraduate in the lab and I only exchanged maybe a total of seven sentences a day. My voice was broken by the end of the day solely because I did not use it nearly as much as I usually do.

I was miserable and homesick. The only lab work I did was make a few restriction maps of the sequence I needed to make a construct of a lysosome membrane protein called LAMP1 (lysosome associated membrane protein 1). We needed one with a red fluorescent tag, and that was going to be my job.

Even though I came up with a plan, I was too scared to talk to the people in my lab about it. Nothing was accomplished that week.

Life Lesson: Don't be afraid to be yourself and actually talk to people. Otherwise you're going to be miserable and sit alone.

Week 2
Learning the Little Things

Week two was when I finally started to work. The other undergrad asked me on that Monday if I was going to do anything, to which I shrugged and turned back to reading another journal article so he wouldn't see the angry tears on the corners of my eyes. Then he stood up and grabbed a bunch of beakers with water and labeled them like they were the materials used to subculture cells. We spent the morning with a culturing tutorial.

The rest of the week was spent learning other little tasks in the lab from my PI's wife and the graduate student. I learned how to increase the concentration of DNA so I could have it sequenced and I received my own cell line to maintain. We even started some steps for my own project. All of the techniques I learned that week were used for the rest of the summer, and my failures resulted from me forgetting what had happened.

Life Lesson: Appreciate the little things, because they some day become the big things.

Week 3
Scientists Get in to Fights

It took a while, but I finally started to get to work on my own plasmid on my own cell line. That meant that I got to observe proteins under the Live Cell Imaging microscope. Up until that I point I had been pretty anxious to get started, but I finally started to feel like I was not a dead weight in the lab. Most of my days were spent getting help from the grad student and then reading in the corner. I did not feel as homesick.

As my cells continued to grow, I grew more comfortable in my lab. I still did not talk to very many of them outside of the graduate student, but I did not mind all too much. That is until a meeting for NPC (the disease that I am researching) research came to Notre Dame.

At the meeting, the presenters got in to arguments and some even left the room in a huff. Being an undergraduate who had just gotten in to the field, I knew very little. So I sat next to the other undergraduate and laughed at the whole thing.

Life Lesson: Scientists are normal human beings, but they really need some more humility. That includes myself.

Week 4
Community Building

Over that weekend, I ran in to the Post Doc from China after Mass. We talked for a while. Instead of talking about Science, we talked about our families and the importance of love in the household. She was very impressed with my maturity and diligence. We became friends. Not only did I not feel like a dead weight, but I felt like a companion to the other lab members. My confidence increased.

At this point, I actually got to talk to the other undergraduate more often and Dr. Vaughan came by every day to just talk to us about whatever he found amusing that day. Considering how much time I spent sitting and waiting for the next thing to happen, it was nice to have some variation in my day.

All of the social interaction helped me come back to being who I am, a happy and confident woman. This was super helpful because it was at this point that I started to work on my own more often, and it was when I did not need super detailed protocols in front of me to be successful. I give a lot of credit to the people in my lab for that.

Life Lesson: You cannot work in isolation.


Week 5
Science is 90% Failure but the 10% makes it worth it

Because my cells were still growing, I did not have a lot of work to do on that Monday. The other undergrad also did not have a lot to do. So I ended up procrastinating by cleaning up my back corner. Let's just say the Vaughan lab has a lot of packrats.

My transfections were not very good, and I forgot how to run an agarose gel. My homesickness started to return as my failures returned over and over again. To defeat it, I spent more time working outside of the lab, reading literature on methodology and dedicated myself to the task I believe God made me for.

Then it started to work. My PI was happy. My lab members and I were friends. Life was good.

Life Lesson: You have to know sadness to truly understand joy.


Week 6
First Week Alone...but not really alone.

During this week, I started to cotransfect my red protein with our green mutant proteins. We wanted to see if the mutants were degraded like many of the other members of the field proposed, or if they were in the lysosome like we hypothesized. Unfortunately, I could not keep my cells healthy, and I could not find any of my proteins as I needed to.

So we killed my line and I stole some from the graduate student. He had kept some cells on the side just in case someone (me) had a problem with their cell line. Even though I was working more independently, I was never completely alone. That's what I love about science. No matter how hard you try, you can never be completely on your own.

Here is a great example: The other undergrad was on vacation, so I was alone in the back corner room. I told my fellow REU students that I would be pretty lonely during that week. They actually came to visit me!

Oh, and I got bored being in this old back room, so I did this.

Life Lesson: The longer you sit around trying to do a task on your day only wastes more time. Also, inside jokes are fun.

Week 7
Learning What Failing Looks Like

This had to be my lowest point in the program. At the very beginning of the week, it looked like everything was working again. I thought that my cells looked good, and my restriction digest had been proven correct once before.

Over and over again my digest failed. Then my cells died.

And I cried.

Failure was not something I wanted to experience with only three weeks left in my program. I needed data and I needed to have something to show for all of the work I had done this summer. Personal growth certainly was not something I could put on a graduate school application.

But I learned that it was more important to have faith that things will work out, and I learned that I did not have to feel completely alone in the struggle. My coworkers made me smile and they made sure that I was doing the right things so that I could be successful in the future. Even though I had very little to show from this week, I believe this was the point where I truly became a scientist.

Life Lesson: You will fail, but you do not have to go through it alone.


Week 8
Experiencing Community

Because I was back to square one (sort of) on the first half of my project, I had a lot of free time to work on other things. I spent most of my free time trying to clone a sequence in to the vector we wanted, and I failed to do so for the most part.

The rest of the time I spent time talking to my fellow lab workers. I got to see the dark room, and I watched the others work on their experiments. While none of these things really made a huge contribution to my own work, I learned a lot. And since the NSF wants REU students to learn as much as possible, I would like to think I was successful.

I talked to my cells like they were my children as I looked at them under the microscope, and on Thursday I got to see what they looked like.

They were all dead again.

Because Thursday was technically my last day of work for that week, I would not let myself be defeated by this moment. I pulled out my older cells and I split them for a new experiment. Dr. Vaughan did not really want me to keep trying.

I had to. So I did.

AND I GOT SOME PICTURES.

Life Lesson: Sometimes the most exciting things come out of the most unexpected places.

Week 9
Like Week 1 All Over Again

Because I had very little going on, and because my PI was out of town, I spent the majority of the week sitting behind my desk and working on stuff on my computer. On top of that, I hardly spoke a word to anyone in the lab until Wednesday afternoon. Apparently they thought I was painfully shy and scared to talk.

I prepared to make my experiments work for the last time. I was anxious to say the least, but I was very excited to see if I could get the results that my PI wanted to see so badly. On the day of my imaging, I sent out various texts for prayers and tweeted specifically for people to pray for me using a Hail Mary (Catholics) or The Lord's Prayer (Protestants). Then I proceeded to bless my coverslips and my microscope.

And hey look! I got a picture or two!

Life Lesson: Prayer and patience can get you anywhere.

Week 10
Wrapping Things Up

As the REU came to a close. I spent the majority of my time in the imaging room editing the pictures I made of my cells. Since the microscope was off, it was pretty cold, but that was ok. I realized just how much I was going to miss everyone in my lab, and I actually felt pretty bad about hiding away in the back room working.

My PI gave me a lot of advice on how to deliver my talk, and then I spent the rest of my time just working on perfecting my talk and enjoying my last few days in the lab. This included celebrating some of my fellow undergrad's accomplishments and chatting with the Post Doc.

On Thursday, my last day of lab, I killed off the rest of my cells and called it a summer.

And then I made this post before I give my talk tomorrow.

I can't believe I am done.

TLDR
Week 1: I did nothing and was a scared little child.
Week 2: The other undergraduate helped me get out of the corner and I learned really basic stuff.
Week 3: Scientists got in to a fight
Week 4: I imaged stuff and made friends
Week 5: My results actually started to work out
Week 6: I leave funny notes and get annoyed when stuff doesn't work.
Week 7: My cells all died and I cried about life, but my coworkers are nice people.
Week 8: I failed a second time, but I came back and got pictures
Week 9: My last experiment was stressing me out and it took a week to happen
Week 10: I felt like I did nothing, and then I left.

My Summer in Song Lyrics

Being stuck in a lab all summer has taught me one thing: Music is very important.

Ok. I learned a lot more than that, but my Spotify playlists got me through the hardest times, the happiest times, and the quietest times that I have experienced in the lab.

So in honor of that...I am going to post the lyrics that I feel encompassed most of my "feels" this summer!

Ben Rector's "The Beat"

And then the beat comes

And then she's moving on the dance floor

And I wonder what she's running from

I had just left Nashville, and I felt like I was running from the story I did not think I should have to tell anymore. I found myself dancing around to this song everywhere, and I actually found myself smiling by the end of my first week of lab.

Keith Urban "Days Go By"

Yeah it's all we've been given,

So you better start livin' right now

'Cause days go by,

The first week was miserable and it felt like I was never going to get out of my basement lab because I chose fear over everything else. Once I started to live a little and enjoy myself, the weeks started to fly by. This song was my theme song for my Saturday Solo Dance Parties. I still can't believe that I am about to leave this place.

Kacey Musgraves "Dime Store Cowgirl"

You can take me out of the country

But you can't take the country out of me

As odd as it seemed to everyone around me, I fought to keep my southern identity while in this new place. Cowboy boots were not just functional, but they were a statement. I also used the word "y'all" significantly more than usual. I missed home, but I knew that it was never too far from my heart.

Matt Maher "Adoration" 

Jesus, Lamb of God, saving love for all

Lord of heav'n and Earth

I bow to You, bow to You, I bow to You

I was very anxious when I had to run experiments that I had never seen before. I also failed too many times to count. When I felt down on myself or life in general, I would play this song on repeat for hours. It was as if every moment I spent listening to it, regardless of what I was doing at the time, was a prayer. I felt so at peace with this song in my ears and the Lord on my heart.

Young the Giant "Cough Syrup"

If I could find a way to see this straight

I'd run away

To some fortune that I, I should have found by now

I hate to say it, but at many points, I considered hiding away because I did not feel like I was reaching my potential. Either that or I thought that I was not doing what God wanted me to. I couldn't see straight. Thankfully I figured it all out.

Jake Miller "First Flight Home"

I can't predict the weather

But you should know that I

I'll be on the first flight home

1. Indiana Weather Sucks.
2. This was my spin song, and there really is no deep purpose. It's just awesome.

Dan and Shay "Party Girl"

Take me to the party girl in the same t-shirt

that you weart to bed while the ceiling fan turns

to the rhythm that we're spinning bare feet on the floor in the living room light

I at one point got really in to country again when the homesickness settled in. That's when I found Dan and Shay, and this song in particular. Even though I love to dance and be around people, this summer has shown me that chillin' at home is perfectly ok with me.

Beyonce "Flawless"

You wake up, flawless

Duh.

Tenth Avenue North "The Truth is Who You Are"

And it's not enough to just say, "I believe"

'Cause truth is that talk is cheap

So grace give me eyes to see

I had a really great conversation with one of my REU friends as we drove from Chicago to South Bend (or maybe it was the other way around...) about what it truly means to be a follower of Christ. It takes a lot more than just simple words. Faith is life. My faith and my life changed and grew dramatically this summer.

Passion Pit "Take a Walk"

Practice isn't perfect

But the market cuts the loss

I remind myself that times could be much worse

I really like this song, but I had never noticed these lyrics before. It sort of relates to the fact that no matter how many times I tried, I still messed up, but at the end of the day, life could be far worse than having to run a few more trials.

Andy Grammer "Back Home"

And no matter where we go

We always find our way back home

And now I am about ready to return to Nashville, TN. Man I miss my coffee drinking, hipster-filled, southern hometown.

Just Some Gratitude

I am a big fan of saying Thank you to people. I am also a huge fan of writing unnecessarily long letters sharing that gratitude. And while I am still going to do that for my lab, I feel like I should share some silly moments that I am thankful for...

Thank you REU fellows for not thinking I was a complete freak when I opened our first conversation with, "What animal would you ride in to battle?"

Thank you Emma for getting ice cream with me instead of staying up too late at the movies.

Thank you Dr. Vaughan for reminding me of the differences between Amish and Mennonite People

Thank you fellow undergraduate for reminding me why I am glad that I am no longer premed

Thank you Dr. Whaley for literally always bringing food along with you.

Thank you grad student for putting your name on the plates we poured together so they could blame you if they were all contaminated.

Thank you Post Doc for constantly complimenting my pearls.

Thank you NPC meeting for giving me a few good stories to laugh about.

Thank you Morgan for understanding my desperate need to go to coffee shops.

Thank you room 613 for sprouting mold so I was forced to do laundry and pack two weeks before leaving.


Thank you roommate for letting me go to bed at 9pm and wake you up for the gym at 5:30am.

Thank you to my PI's wife who understood my sass.

Thank you random old people who sat next to me at Mass for holding my hand during the Our Father.

Just watch. This struggle could be so real.

Thank you random grad students for letting me play trivia with y'all even though I contributed essentially nothing.

Thank you Vaughan lab for teaching me that it is OK to not say anything for several hours and that I won't spontaneously combust if I do.

Thank you Darby for taking us in to the Daughters of Saint Paul book store when we went to Chicago.

Thank you grad student for knowing how to troubleshoot every mistake by already having made the same mistake.

Thank you Kevin for walking through my lab weekly and giving me something to give you crap about.

Thank you chemist for existing in the biology lab. You kept me sane.

Thank you to the physics REU kids who always ate my cookies.

Thank you to Hal, my microscope, for not breaking down when I did.

Thank you Netflix for understanding just how exhausted I was in the evenings and sticking with me.

Thank you to Dr. Vaughan for reminding me that sarcasm is arguably the most intelligent form of humor.

Thank you to Notre Dame's Yik Yak for actually being humorous.

Thank you to COS7 cells for being strong enough to deal with my constant abuse.

Thank you to the speakers I found in the back corner that made my Sunday dance parties in the lab that much more enjoyable.

Thank you to South Bend weather for always giving me a reason to change an outfit and only have to wear my rain boots for a couple of hours.

Thank you to the lakes that taught me that geese are not kind creatures.

Thank you to lysosome related proteins for giving me 48 hours of free time every experiment

If you couldn't tell...that really long incubation period is why I had time to write this....oh the life of a cell biologist. You can't get me back to Biochemistry any faster...

Why Comparison is Good

Being a 21 year old who dances, is a science major, and is an active community member are all things that lead to a predisposition to comparison. I would love to say that it is simply my environment that leads me to compare myself to others, but that would not be true.

It's because I am a woman.

Now now, before all of the feminist fighters close the tab, allow me to finish my thought.

The Genius of Motherhood

"In fact, woman has a genius all her own, which is vitally essential to both society and the Church." Pope Saint John Paul II

What is this feminine genius? What makes a woman intelligent in a unique way that is not found in men?

It is empathy and feeling.

Society is highly aware that women are more likely to describe their experiences through feelings. They are more likely to cry in a movie, and they are more likely to have an emotional connection to an experience. While the level of emotion is different for each woman, the fact that women are innately tuned to their emotions is highly important.

But how is this a skill? What makes that genius?

Women are more likely to sense the feelings of others around them. This comes evolutionarily from the development of motherhood. The role of a mother in a person's life shapes who they are. Young men learn to respect women from their fathers and they learn what emotion and hard work look like from their mothers. Young women have a role model for their adulthood constantly in their lives.

Most importantly, mommies are the ones to kiss boo-boos.

They start out as cuts and bruises on the playground, but they develop in to deeper issues from the world around us. Regardless of the nature of the injury, a mother is able to help heal her child. How many times do we attempt to hide our issues from our mothers and how many times do we fail to simply because she could tell something was wrong without a word?

God gave women empathy so that no person would be completely alone.

Because women were designed to become mothers, all women have the same genius ability to take away pains from this world. From childhood, a girl is able to tell when something is wrong, either with their friend or with a stranger.

Where Genius Becomes Idiocy

Sensitivity to the world does not just include emotion. In fact, women are able to see far more. According to a study at Brooklyn College, women can see more shades of color then men.

However, because women are so highly relational, the people around them are far more important than the shade of green they are wearing.

As a woman, I notice everything about the people around me. Their height, their weight, their hair, their clothing, their laugh, and everything that I can use to describe them. It makes remembering a face easy, but it causes many issues down the road.

When sin entered the world, the devil took a permanent perch on a woman's shoulder. He whispers in her ear, telling her that she is not good enough, that she will never be good enough. In a desperate attempt to be worth something, a woman will seek out what is good enough.

She will look at the other girls.

She will see their physical form and think, "She has a much better body than me."

Obviously this is wrong for us to do. People have been harping at magazines for changing the images of their models for years, and self promotion articles often remind girls to stop thinking that someone is better than them. Society believes that the real problem lies in self depreciation rooted in our negative comparisons.

They forgot about the second half of a woman's thoughts.

To make herself feel better, she will look at another girl and think, "Well at least I am prettier than her."

We have grown to make comparison a form of consolation for our insecurities. There is always someone that is better than us, but we can always find someone beneath us. If it is not fitness, then it is intelligence. If it is not either of those things, it is number of friends on Facebook. No one wants to be on the bottom.

Women are able to sense the emotions of others, but because we are so concerned with our own image, we ignore everyone around us. Instead of noticing the unique soul standing before us, we think about the mass of carbon based life and its material success. At the end of the day, we only care how we feel in relation to these earthly things.

Fun fact guys: feelings are not objects.

We are using objects to create our feelings.

Because we are constantly comparing ourselves in a way that tears others down, we are not only distorting our own self image, but we are also beating down on the spirits of those around us. People can tell when you are judging them. And no matter how much we don't want to admit it, the feeling of being judged hurts even more when your comparisons define your life.

So if we are going to use comparisons to define ourselves, then we better be using the right ones.

A Better Comparison

The best way to define oneself is in this way:

"See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are." ~1 John 3:1

God made each woman, and He loves them very much. If we are children of the Creator, would it make sense for Him to include something worthless in His family? Of course not. Therefore, we must recognize the truth that each person is beautiful and important and destined for more. There is no way on Earth that any woman could be beneath everyone else, not fundamentally at least.

If we are all on a level playing field, then we must act like we are. The Devil wants to break us apart and make us feel weak by telling us that we are less than what we are, and we perpetuate that sentiment by letting other people know that feeling.

But what if we changed that?

A Call to My Fellow Women

You don't know exactly what someone is insecure about. But as a woman, you can tell that there are insecurities filling her subconscious. You can see her looking around the gym, wondering if she actually fits in with the athletic people. You can see her hiding her exam from her peers, worried that she is not as smart as people thinks she is. You can see her posting solely happy statuses on Facebook and only sharing exciting things, hiding the life that we all have: Netflix marathons and screaming in to pillows.

We need to remind them that they are special.

It doesn't matter how you do it. The easiest way is a simple compliment. Because women are able to see so much more in a person than just their hair color and their height, we can come up with something nice to say to every single person.

One time I told a girl that I adored her hair and that I wish mine looked like hers.

Apparently it was one of her largest insecurities.

You may never know the impact of your single smile or compliment. All you know is that it is important that every person feels special. If you want to be happy, then let everyone else be happy too. I really like the opening verse in "Biscuits" by Kacey Musgraves:

Taking down your neighbor won't take you any higher
I burned my own damn finger poking someone else's fire
I've never gotten taller making someone else feel small
If you ain't got nothing nice to say, don't say nothing at all

If you notice that someone has something that you wish you had, don't try to tear down your neighbor to forget that. Let the girl know that her legs are awesome. Let your lab partner know that you wish you were as good at test taking as they are.

We need to start building people up.

Because once they are confident, then they can starting building us up in return.

Let's fight the devil ladies, one compliment at a time.

Oh. One last thing.

You want to know who is beautiful? Read the first word on this line.

What You Won't Get From My Twitter/Insta

I have been at Notre Dame for seven and a half weeks now, and I just realized that I have not informed my Dear Readers on what I am actually doing here! They say that you do not fully understand something unless you are able to explain it to someone else, so I am going to try that here! (And if I fail...my talk in two weeks is going to be really bad.)

Lysosome Storage Diseases
What does that mean? Basically, your cells take up cholesterol from your diet. Similar to how when we eat and our food travels to our stomach, cholesterol from outside of the cell accumulates in the lysosome.

From there, the cholesterol goes to the Endoplasmic Reticulum to be made in to other things or be sent to different organelles. In lysosome storage diseases (LSD), cholesterol cannot get out of the lysosome. There are many different versions of these disorders, resulting in many different rare diseases.

Neimann Pick Type C (NPC)

In the Vaughan lab, where I have been spending my summer, we are looking at a lysosome storage disease called Neimann Pick Type C (NPC for short). NPC affects the perkinje cells in the brain, and causes dramatic brain damage. Damage to the brain causes several other symptoms that are pretty diverse for each patient. NPC affects about 1 in every 150,000 people.

By people I mean children.

Before the age of ten.

They die before they complete adolescence.

A long time ago there was a famous coach at Notre Dame named Ara Parseghian. His children lived in Tucson, AZ, which is where I grew up. They had four children, and three of them were diagnosed with NPC, and they all passed away.

Because there were no treatments available for these children, their mother set up a foundation named after their grandfather to further research on this rare disease. My lab for this summer is part of the small community of researchers trying to figure out what happens in NPC and how to treat it effectively.

NPC1

The first step was to identify the protein coded by the recessive gene in NPC. They found that most of the mutations affected a protein called NPC1.

To explain that picture up there, there are many parts (domains if you are a scientist) to this protein. The first part that matters are the many sequences that pass through membranes. The next part is a dileucine signal, meaning that the protein goes to the lysosome. Add those two things together and you get a lysosome membrane protein. The last part to pay attention to is the sterol sensing domain (SSD).

What do you get?

A protein in lysosomes that binds to sterols, cholesterol in particular.

If this protein is messed up, then moving cholesterol from the lysosome is not going to work very well is it?

What happens to NPC1?

This is the part that our lab is trying to figure out. Because this is such a young field of research, there is not a lot of information on the mechanisms or pathways. There are two different models that are currently being focused on.

Endoplasmic Reticulum Assisted Degradation

The first hypothesis relating to the effect of mutation on NPC1 was presented by Dan Ory in this paper. In this model, the mutations in NPC1 cause the protein to be folded differently. Most of the time, when a protein is not folded like it should be, then it is broken down before it can move on to other parts of the cell. Because most protein folding and modifications happen at the ER, that is where the mutant protein is recognized and set up to be degraded.

So if the protein that normally binds to cholesterol to be transported is degraded, then you don't have anyone to hold on to cholesterol. If cholesterol is not bound to anything, then it gets stuck in the lysosome. BOOM. Lysosome storage disease.

The key to this theory is that when NPC1 binds to cholesterol, the lysosome sends everything to the ER in little packages called vesicles. NPC1 is in those membranes and travels to the ER again that way.

The Vaughan Model

The lab that I am participating in this summer has a different theory as to why cholesterol is not leaving the lysosome. Before I explain, I will give some background.

There are these things called membrane tubules. Think of long highways that stuff can travel on through the cell. It kind of happens like this (but not exactly):

Before I got to ND, the Vaughan Lab had noticed that these little structures come off of the lysosome. Interestingly, these membrane tubules were not present in mutant cells. Their hypothesis was that cholesterol traveled through the cell via these membrane tubules, and NPC disease happened because the membrane tubules were not present in the mutant cells.

But wait? What does that have to do with NPC1?

That takes another protein.

STARD9
In an attempt to understand the mechanism better, the Vaughan lab looked for other proteins involved in making membrane tubules. What they found was a new motor protein called STARD9. Remember the video above? (if you didn't watch it, this is your chance) STARD9 would be the guy moving everything along essentially.

In healthy cells, they could see that NPC1 and STARD9 were in the same place.

This did not happen in the cells that represent NPC.

Many people say that this happens because of the degradation model that I described above. However, in our microscopy experiments, the Vaughan Lab could see the mutant protein in lysosomes. If they made it to another organelle, then it did not degrade.

Where I Come In
Now if you have been reading this blog post, you probably are wondering what this has to do with me. If you look at my tweets and my instagram posts, you would not get all of that theoretical stuff. I am pretty sure NPC is rarely mentioned...

These are the things that happen in the Vaughan lab...

My job is to help identify lysosomes and then see if I can find the mutant NPC1 protein inside the lysosomes. The parts I need are: glowing proteins, a Live Cell Imaging microscope, and good cells.

Finding Lysosomes with New Stuff
There is another protein that are in lysosomes called LAMP1 (lysosome associated membrane protein 1). Everyone uses it as a "tag" for lysosomes. When I look at cells expressing the genes for this protein along with a florescent tag, I can see it glowing that color under the microscope.

Our lab has a version that glows green. That's fine and all, but all of our mutant proteins glow green. If we wanted to say that our mutants were in the same spot as LAMP1, then we would need it to glow another color.

I am making a red version. Well...cherry.

This involves me cutting up a bunch of DNA and then running it down the gel to get the sequences I want so I can put it together in a new way. The sequences I want have a specific size, and if I cut it properly, then I can see it really well.

If you want to know...it did not work.

Where Oh Where is NPC1?

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, this part of the project is probably what you have seen the most. As I said earlier, if you have a tag on a protein, you can see it glowing under the microscope. So I put some of the DNA in my COS7 Cells, wait 48 hours, and then I use our fancy microscope to look for cells with glowing proteins.

I named the microscope Hal. This is Hal and I. We're really tight if you didn't know.

Now there are a few challenges to getting a good picture. When you put these weird plasmids in the cells, they freak out and crank out these proteins all the time, which makes them pretty sick. Also, if you do not properly take care of your cells, they are going to die. I had that experience happen twice. One time it was so bad that this happened...

Well actually I was just an idiot who couldn't keep her cells alive.

Why Does This Matter?

Obviously my contribution to the lab as an undergrad is minimal. However, by using images taken from the microscope, we can do some computations to determine if the mutated NPC1 protein is in the lysosome with LAMP1.

If the numbers are good, then it would be another piece of evidence supporting Dr. Vaughan's model.

And if we have a better understanding of what happens to the mutated protein, then we can study why the membrane tubules are no longer present in the mutant. This can help us understand how cholesterol normally travels through the cell. By finding locations and mechanisms, better treatments for NPC disease (and other related diseases) can be developed.

What Are You Up To Now?

No. That is NOT safe lab practice.

Ok. Lab dance parties are pretty fun, but that is not exactly what is going on (at least not when anyone is watching). Basically I have failed a million and two times, but I am working on improving. I also am learning a lot about what everyone else is doing and how everyone else's experiments work. The Vaughan lab is full of cool people.

Lab Buddy: Read "Other Undergrad who sits in the same back corner room."

Of course that does not necessarily mean that I have learned any extra social skills by being in a basement lab all summer. I am pretty sure I have started to become more of an awkward scientist....

But really, I am thoroughly enjoying my time in the lab. My cells are currently very healthy, and I am getting closer to making my own "glowing protein." Hopefully I will have some valuable results by my REU symposium...

So there. Now you know what I am doing.