I am not kidding when I say I ran across the street to make the bus this morning.  The driver, bless her heart, saw me and let me in.  If she hadn’t, I would’ve been stuck waiting for at least another 15 minutes for the next bus.  The other bus for this stop was right ahead of the one I got on.  I couldn’t help but think that my final week in Seattle was off to a good start.

After climbing five flights of stairs without gasping for breath, I made my way to my desk and was sad to see that the new building across the street now completely blocked my view of the Space Needle.  I soon got over this disappointment and began making lists for the targets that would be useful for the meeting before lunch.  Mark told me that I would need lists for active and inactive targets, but he didn’t specify which.  I wasn’t in the mood to ask him to clarify on Friday, and so I made about ten spreadsheets for the different possibilities.  I think that puts the count for spreadsheets at over 80.  Yikes.

My meeting with Mark, PV, and Burak (the expert on the software we use to map pathways for drugs and targets) went very well.  The majority of the meeting was spent by PV and Mark asking questions on how they can enter the data that I’ve compiled into the software to get their desired outputs.  There were a few moments where one of the men asked me about a specific spreadsheet, and it took me several moments to decipher which one they meant out of the 80+ I have saved.  I guess that’s what happens when you have way too much information…

Despite my stomach grumbling at 9:30 this morning, I didn’t realize it was time for lunch until it was about 1:00.  This is very untypical of me, and if nothing else, it shows me how much I truly enjoy working at Novo Nordisk!  I lucked out when I went downstairs as there were leftover doughnuts from a top-rated bakery in Seattle.  Without it my lunch of a granola bar and peanut butter sandwich on smooshed bread that expires today would have been a little less complete.  The joys of trying to use every last bit of food before I fly back home are quite overwhelming at times, if you can’t tell.

The rest of my day was spent working on the presentation I’ll give on Wednesday.  I had the hardest time finding a good picture of cornfields in Iowa.  None of the pictures depicted what I had in mind, but I think I have plenty of other pictures to suffice!  It was tough to figure out what to say in 15 minutes about my experiences as an intern for ten weeks.  I did manage to finish most of it, and now all I have to do is finish a slide about why I chose to work at Novo Nordisk and another about the results of my findings.  I’ll be excited when I’m done with this as I’ve never been one to be thrilled by giving presentations.

Until tomorrow,

Ashley