A Typical Day’s Routine at MMSS

(Please note that this is an example day and not everyone will experience the same thing. This one day's schedule is fabricated and your own experience might slightly vary from what's described below. It is designed to give participants and their parents a general sense of what most days will look like, on average. It is layed out as a journal entry naration of an MMSS participant on the first Friday of the program.)

Journal Entry #6- FRIDAY

7:30 AM:  Wake up in Markley Residence Hall.  My roommate is already awake and headed to the gender specific community bathroom to the showers.  It’s only two doors down the hallway.  I grab my towel and follow in kind.

7:32 AM:  Return to room because I forgot my shampoo and soap.  Still waking up…

7:55 AM: Return to room, get dressed in CLEAN clothes (I did my laundry last night in the basement of Markley.  Thanks Dad for sending all those quarters along!), and head to get some breakfast.

7:58 AM:  Arrive in Hill Dining Center.  Hill is located in Mosher-Jordan Hall and is about 150 yards away from Markley.  The majority of the other MMSS students are showing up at the same time to eat.  I think today I’ll have an omelet-to-order, some turkey sausage links, and orange juice.  Yesterday I had scrambled eggs, a waffle, and some fruit.  I can look up what's going to be served tomorrow by going to the following link: http://www.housing.umich.edu/dining/menus/#/marketplace

8:40 AM:  Return to room and pack my backpack.  One of the MMSS residential hall counselors pokes her head in and makes sure that everyone is awake and getting going.  I meet up with a few of my other classmates and we walk to our room.  My class (Genes to Genomics) is located on the fourth floor of the USB (Undergraduate Science Building) which is only about a 7 minute walk but it always seems closer because a few other Genes to Genomics students and I talk the whole way about last night’s game of Ultimate Frisbee.

8:53 AM:  Arrive in classroom 4151 USB.  Our professor is already there getting the morning’s activities setup.  She met us at Markley on the first day and walked us to class along with the same counselor who checked in on us this morning, so we all know how to get here now- no problem.

9:00 AM:  Class starts.  This morning is a combination of classroom discussion, lecture, and hands-on mini experiments as we get familiar with the tools we’ll be using this afternoon.  The PowerPoint presentation shows how the fruit flies we’ll be cultivating have mutated and what we’re to be looking for under the microscope as we sort the larva.  This morning we were introduced to microscopes, pipettes, Petri dishes, and agar.

10:30 AM:  Class takes a 5-10 minute break for everyone to get up and stretch.  I use the time to ask the professor a few more questions about Mendel’s famous pea plant experiment we discussed a few days ago.

10:40 AM:  Class starts back up.

Noon:  Class ends for the morning.  I grab my backpack and my 14 other classmates and I walk back to the Hill Dining Center.  Our class has two commuter students who don’t stay in the residence halls at night.  However, they join us for lunch at Hill.  I think I’ll have a grilled chicken sandwich, some tomato soup, and a garden salad.  Yesterday a few of us went into town and grabbed lunch at a cool diner on State St.

1:20 PM:  We leave Hill and head back to class.

1:27 PM:  Arrive at 3143 USB.  This is where we come very afternoon to do our labs.  This room is filled with cool equipment!

1:30 PM:  Class starts up again.  Our professor introduces this afternoon’s lab presentation and overview.

2:00 PM:  We split up into groups of 3 and are assigned to our lab stations.  Our course has a GSI (Graduate Student Instructor) and USI (Undergraduate Student Instructor) who attend both the morning and afternoon sessions, but mainly help out in the afternoons with the labs.  Our UGI was a MMSS participant here 4 years ago and a residence hall counselor last year.  If I come to U of M in two years, I think I want to work with MMSS again.

4:30 PM:  We finish with our lab experiment for the day.  Hopefully if everything went right, on Monday we’ll have a bunch of Petri dishes with fruit fly larva that glow under UV light.  I can’t wait to see if mine turns out like it should!!!  I grab my stuff and we walk back to Markley.

4:40 PM:  Arrive back in my room and drop my stuff off.  I need to check back in with my counselor, but first I need to just lie down and take a quick nap…..I’ll go check in……in….in……a few….

5:10 PM:  I woke up to my counselor knocking on my door.  Opps!  I forgot to talk to her.  My roommate walked by her on the way to dinner and said I was in here…asleep.  I’m glad she woke me up because I’m starving!!!!  I head to Hill Dinning Hall.

5:11 PM:  Return to room.  I forgot my m-card.  It’s what allows me to get into the dining hall.  This way I don’t have to pay for each meal.  It’s just all part of the meal plan and by me swiping my card to get in, it shows that I am signed up by being part of MMSS.

5:20 PM:  I make it to Hill Dining Center for dinner.  They are open from 5-7 so I’m in no rush.  Tonight I’m going to have an Individual Vegan Pot Pie and go to the stir-fry station.  I’ve made friends with someone from every class so I try to catch up with them during dinner and see what they did today.  Everyone does really cool things!  I wish I could be in ALL the classes, but there just isn’t enough time in the day.  I’ll just have to come back next year.

6:30 PM:  My friends and I talk about what we’re going to do tonight.  There are three options the counselors have organized to choose from, and none of us want to stay in the dorms….we’re not THAT tired….yet.  The choices are: bowling, a movie at the Michigan Theater, or a game of basketball at the CCRB (http://www.recsports.umich.edu/facilities/ccrb.html.)  We decide to go bowling and are to meet up with the three counselors who are running it in the main lobby of Markley by 7:30 PM.  Because the bowling alley is outside of the boundaries, we cannot go without a counselor, which is fine with me because I would get lost anyway.

7:00 PM:  I return to my room, and go online.  My parents want emails from me.

7:02 PM:  Done writing emails home.  Now go onto Facebook until 7:29:59 PM.

7:30 PM:  The group of people going bowling leaves Markley and walks to downtown.

7:45 PM:  Check in to bowling alley.  Rent shoes, lane, and buy some snacks.  Thanks Mom for the extra cash!

8:40 PM:  Finished bowling.  Normally I bowl a 300, but tonight I just got a 94.  It must be the lane and these shoes.  I’m normally much better at home.  Oh well…  We need to get back to the dorm by 9:00.

8:55 PM:  We arrive back at Markley and check in with our same counselor as before.  Good thing we made it back by now because our key cards stop opening the doors at 9:00 PM.

9:00 PM:  Hang out with other MMSS students in the residence hall.  We mainly hang out in the hallways or lobbies and talk to one another.  Last night I played a couple board games with some of the kids in the Combinatorial Combat course.  They had learned some really cool strategies with a whole bunch of the games we were playing.

10:30 PM:  It’s time for me to get ready to go to sleep.  I’m getting tired.

11:00 PM:  Our counselor does a final round checking in on all of us.  We are supposed to be finished with everything by 11 and in our rooms.  I’m so tired anyway, I can’t imagine being up later than that.  Tomorrow’s going to be a long day as I’m going on the bus to Cedar Point Amusement Park.  I can’t wait!!!  I hear the Roller Coaster Physics Class gets to go again to do a whole bunch of experiments while riding the coasters.