WEBVTT

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Good afternoon, everyone.

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My name is Eleanor Demmons.

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I'm a junior here
at Mount Holyoke.

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I'm a neuroscience major
and an English minor.

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And this summer, I
got to go to Ireland.

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It was really fun.

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And I worked in a genetics
laboratory in Dublin City

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Center at Trinity College
for a wonderful man named

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Matthew Campbell.

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And I also got to
see a lot of Ireland.

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And I traveled to
a few other places

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in Europe, which
I'll talk about.

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So it was a very unique and
special experience for me.

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And huge thanks to Lynn
Cumming for allowing me to go.

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So this is me in the lab.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I just wanted to start with
this picture for a few reasons.

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One of the most amazing
things about my summer

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was that I worked with
some fabulous people.

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Not only did I have
an exceptional boss,

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but my other coworkers
were absolutely wonderful.

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They were all quite a
bit older than I was,

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all PhD students and beyond.

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So it was interesting for
me to be kind of that,

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like, goofy 19 year old trying
to fit in with these very

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well established adults.

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However, I did work
in a European country,

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and everybody is pretty
relaxed about life.

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So they were happy to
kind of have my energy.

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And typically, in a
bio lab like this,

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you should probably having a
lab coat and some serious attire

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on, but we really
didn't do that.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Not that that's a great
idea, but that just kind of

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shows how happy we were.

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We were throwing away
old computers this day,

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and it was very exciting.

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We were getting
these print readers.

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So I just wanted to
talk a little bit

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about what this lab focuses on.

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So this is an
ocular genetics lab

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which deals with eyes,
which is really cool.

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So Trinity College is a
really big university, very

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different from Mount Holyoke.

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And they have an entire genetics
department, which we only

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have a couple of different
classes dedicated

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to that field of study.

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So that was really
interesting for me

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to be in a lab with
only nine people,

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but my department
was, like, 150 people.

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So that was very different.

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And so our lab in particular was
looking at age-related macular

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degeneration.

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And many of you may know someone
in your life who is starting

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to have symptoms of this.

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A lot of our grandparents
are experiencing partial AMD.

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One really good thing to know
is that AMD, wet or dry form,

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does not completely
blind a person

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because your peripheral
vision remains

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intact throughout this disease.

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There also is a large
genetic component.

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So you can imagine
that in Ireland--

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and I'll talk about
this in a minute,

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this can be a really
serious problem.

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So basically, what you're
seeing in this picture

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is a lot of cloudiness
in the middle of the eye.

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All of those lines are mostly
just blood vessels, which

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you don't need to worry about.

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This kind of cloudiness makes
it so that eventually, we almost

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have a visual hole
where it's just black

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and kind of looking at nothing.

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And that's a huge
bummer, obviously.

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And this is also caused
by drusen buildup.

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And I'll talk about what makes
that happen a little bit.

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And also, this happens in the
macular region of our retina,

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and our retina is in
the back of our eye.

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And the macula is really
repsonsible for all

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of the little things that we do.

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And so once you can't
do the little things,

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the bigger things
become harder as well.

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So for someone who has
lived their entire life

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being able to see
perfectly fine,

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and then getting
older and starting

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to have a little bit of
trouble seeing things,

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that adjustment is
really hard because you

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haven't lived your life going
about your daily activities

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blind.

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So it really takes elderly
folk out of their homes

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where they're independent
and really happy and kind

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of bombs out their
quality of life

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because they have to go
into assisted living, which

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in Ireland is not as good as
it is in the United States,

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and we don't even think
it's very good here.

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The other reason that it's
important to study this

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in Ireland and why
this lab in particular

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is so dedicated to
the research of AMD

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is that AMD accounts for 20%
of all blindness in the world.

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But its prevalence
in Ireland is--

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and actually, this is
another world statistic--

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is 7.2% of people
who are affected.

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And that's pretty large.

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And over a million
people in Ireland--

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there are over a million people
in Ireland-- so many of them

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are also affected by AMD
because it's a small gene pool.

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So 700,000 people in
Ireland eventually

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have had AMD, and that
was another statistic

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that my boss told me about.

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And also, just good
to know that the life

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expectancy has
risen significantly,

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and it's on the rise.

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So it's important to start to
figure this out and how can

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we treat it.

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Because it's becoming
more of an issue.

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So we were focused on a
few different proteins that

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have a circadian rhythm
component to them, just meaning

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that they come about in the
morning and do different jobs,

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and then maybe they do
different jobs later at night.

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So that was kind of
interesting for us

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because we were
working with mice,

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so we had to take
different samples

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at different times of the day.

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And one of these proteins that
the lab had already discovered,

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was really involved, with
this protein called claudin-5,

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which is responsible for
some of the cleaning that

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happens of the eye.

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So our eyes are exposed to
toxins, wind, rain, heat, cold

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on a daily basis,
and our lenses need

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to be cleaned and
maintained in order for us

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to see all the time.

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So when these proteins that are
responsible for this cleaning

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stop working, the dead lipids
and these different toxins

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actually build up in
the back of our retinas.

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And that's what causes these
drusen components to solidify

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so that we have trouble seeing.

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Also what can happen
is geographic atrophy,

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where we have nothing
in the middle instead.

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So that's where the wet and
dry form of this disease--

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that's the
differentiation there.

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So yeah, we were in
lots of early mornings

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and lots of late nights.

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And this is just a teeny
bit about the hypothesis.

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We were looking into tight
junction proteins, which

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is what claudin-5 falls under.

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So I was doing lots of
different laboratory techniques

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to just check out
these proteins.

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Lots of small, molecular
work, lots of pipetting.

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It was lot of stuff.

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And then I just had
these little mices

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down at the bottom
of the slide here

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to show you that I did do
a lot of stuff with mice.

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And we did have to
sacrifice them often.

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And that was sort of sad.

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However, they, you
know-- for science.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So we had a really
big mouse lab,

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and the smell was for reals.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So just a few things
that I learned--

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and this is just the laundry
list of scientific exercises

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that I got to carry
out, which was great.

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But I just really wanted to
highlight a couple of things

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that I got to deal with.

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Fluorescent angiography,
listed down near the bottom--

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that's a certain type of imaging
of the eye which is really

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complicated and hard to use.

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And it sometimes takes
technicians almost two years

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to figure this out.

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And I got to learn in the summer
because my boss was like, you

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need to know how to do this.

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It's so cool, and it's really
hard, and we're going to do it.

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And I got to work with
MRI machines, which

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yeah, we make them for mice.

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Weird, right?

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They're still huge, but
that was really interesting.

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And then I also got to use
a confocal microscope, which

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is a massive microscope
that would probably take up

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a quarter of this entire room.

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And its laser, which is crazy.

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And if you break it, that's
three million dollars that you

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just--

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so, my boss said
to me, he was like,

00:07:38.232 --> 00:07:39.238 align:middle line:84%
Eleanor if you
break this, I have

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to send you back to the States.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I was like, OK,
I won't break it!

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So just a couple of things
to finish off that I really

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learned about myself.

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I was so independent
this summer.

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I really had one
really close friend,

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but a lot of buddies
because I was young

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and as much as I was friends
with my older co-workers,

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there's a little
bit of a gap there.

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I learned how to be a better
science kid, which is great.

00:08:05.390 --> 00:08:07.681 align:middle line:84%
And I got to really take a
lot of laboratory experience

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that I've gotten out here at
Mount Holyoke and apply it

00:08:10.550 --> 00:08:11.690 align:middle line:90%
and further it this summer.

00:08:11.690 --> 00:08:13.330 align:middle line:84%
I felt like I really
got to understand

00:08:13.330 --> 00:08:17.510 align:middle line:84%
some of the techniques that I've
been growing up knowing about.

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And I also-- yeah.

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So, you know, what to
do when you're lonely?

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I really ran a lot.

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I watched some TV,
but I also explored

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and that was really great.

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And just sort of a little
outsider looking in component.

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I was living in an
English speaking country,

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but I was still an outsider.

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And I had to be careful about
saying I was from the States.

00:08:38.020 --> 00:08:38.914 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

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I'd get made fun of.

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It's just kind of interesting
to be working so closely

00:08:44.520 --> 00:08:49.060 align:middle line:84%
with something that was really
to do with a disease that

00:08:49.060 --> 00:08:51.800 align:middle line:84%
was not directly affecting the
US as much as it was Ireland.

00:08:51.800 --> 00:08:54.800 align:middle line:90%


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So that's my summer.

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[APPLAUSE]