To be honest, I hate carrying novels to school. They add a little weight to my bag and I despise getting the cover or corners of my book bent!!! But this quarter is my last one of college and I don’t really need to bring much to school anymore so I’m okay with carrying a book. I have to read a novel for extra credit for one of my classes. I’m so glad I can bring a novel to school now – it helps so much during down-times and I’ve read way more than I would at home.

The novel I’m reading for class is called, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks. She was an African-American woman who died of cancer, but a doctor harvested her cells before she died without her knowledge or consent (this was when African-Americans were still segregated from Whites) and her cancer cells ended up being the first “immortal cell line” for humans. The cells were used for cancer research and helped scientists discover vaccines. The book focuses on Henrietta’s life and family, and looks into the issue of how immoral it was to use her cells without asking or informing her.

Microbiology lab has been interesting. For the entire class, we are mostly working with bacteria cells from our own bodies. That means we’ll be isolating and culturing our own bacteria for like ten weeks! And yes, we had to do the infamous “anal swab” where we take a sterile cotton swab, stick it up our butts in the bathroom, and put it on petri dishes to grow bacteria from the intestinal tract. Haha, it was very awkward.

And let me tell you, bacteria cultures can smell really bad! Our skin isolated bacteria smelled like rotten feet, seriously! Bleeeck.

Oh yeah! I am entering the giveaway for a Yonanas machine! If you haven’t eaten a frozen banana before, it’s delicious. Tastes like a creamy, banana-flavored (duh) popsicle. I’ve never tried making frozen bananas into the consistency of soft serve ice cream (don’t have the right equipment), so the Yonanas machine seems awesome. If you would like to enter the giveaway, check out this link!