One of my many summer goals this year was to clean up my room; I'm talking about getting into every drawer and either gifting or trashing anything I found unnecessary. As I was doing so, I found that I had a lot of flyers and brochures from the different universities I had visited. I thought of throwing them out, but then again, these papers could surely assist me in the decision of what college was best. While I thought and thought my mind stumbled upon a great idea. I remembered I had this cork board in my room with nothing in it, so I decided to pin up everything that was useful, and so I did with the help of my maid.

I began by scattering all of the papers on my floor and dividing them according to their college. I found I had a few important things missing for some like acceptance rates, diversity percentages or maps, so I busted out my computer and started to research. After printing the missing items, I test placed them on the board to plan where each one would go. Once the dimensions matched up, I was ready to pin! Melva suggested to arrange them in accordance with color, this way when one looked at them from afar, they looked pretty next to each other, so I put the orange and brown ones up and the purple and blue ones down.

As I was pinning the papers, I found some of them were too heavy to stay up, something I had not previously anticipated. When faced with this problem I found an easy solution! I found a clip and then pinned the clip to the board. This worked pretty good and gave the whole board a creative twist. By the end, I looked at the board from a distance and was pretty proud of my work. I thanked my maid Melva for helping me with it and began to analyze it. I know this will now help me decide pick my top school!

At this day's IGEM meeting, my 6th meeting so far, we did something strange. I am usually involved in the biotech area of the club, where I have the opportunity to explore the different aspects of synthetic biology. Yet, today, given that we had little to do, I volunteered to join the fundraising section for a day. We have been given the task to raise as much money as possible in order to enroll as a competing team in next year's competition, yet to do so we must pay a minimum fee. 

As we began to collaborate as a group, we started to brainstorm ideas for possible fundraisers. We researched on the web and I created a google document where we could all add our ideas. Some possibilities were bake sales, which I suggested, science games and T-shirt sales, but we weren’t sure about any idea. Suddenly, Mikhail shared a thought that got us all keen to begin the preparation.

We began to develop the idea of arranging a sort of secret santa sale. I volunteered to bake cupcakes for one gift, karla to pack candy for another, and Sofia Carolina said we could also make a pass for a free uniform day. Before we knew it, we had a fundraising project on the move.

We didn’t get to the specifications, but I certainly hope that the fundraising crew goes with our idea. It was fun to escape the ordinary, yet I am still eager to going back to my Biotech group on the next IGEM meet.

Today had the idea to re-design my room. After four years of keeping it the same,  I realised that it wasn't the best representative of my identity. When I was 12, I chose to color my room a light turquoise hue matched with a tone of beige, but as the years went by I changed, and so did my tastes in colors. To begin this long process, I googled room examples and brought up a color palate. I wanted to go for a clean, modern look, with few intense color splashes, so I busted out my CASAS magazines and began to browse. 

Once I found examples of what I wanted, I proceeded to prepare for the process of decoration. I made a list of things I needed to buy and jotted down the aspects of my room that I would be changing. After this, I was ready to re-design my room.  

I told my mom about the plan, and she agreed to help out, we worked together all throughout that Sunday morning. Working with my mom was clearly a benefit; she ensured the process went on at a quick pace and offered input of ideas and a new set of eyes. Still, I must admit, there were some drawbacks from having her on the team. My mom would sometimes challenge my decisions or take matters into her hands, when this happened I simply reminded her this was OUR project, and she would back down. 

I had never designed a room before; I had no prior knowledge and little practice, but I was able to learn from the experience anyways. By noon, my room looked completely different, and better at the same time. I was really happy with the end results. Nonetheless, my job here is far from over, I will have to continue at this for a few weeks in order to accomplish my original plans.