This week, I continued to work on some improvements to the APE-Gen codebase and got to know my labmates a bit better. Though everything is still pretty new to me, I feel as though I’m starting to really understand how all the different parts of the code are linked together and I’m finally grasping how all the packages work. Increasingly, I’m realizing how valuable my computer science education, as well as my experiences as a TA, since I’m able to understand more complex pieces of code easily and write really clean, modular code as well. I’ve really enjoyed lab meetings – both with the smaller bio group as well as full-lab meetings – as they’ve given me a better sense of the graduate student community and lifestyle in addition to being helpful and thought-provoking. I’ve gotten a chance to do some of the tourist activities around Houston; over the weekend I went to Galveston beach, which was so hot but very fun.