Name: Michelle B.
Year: Class of 2008
Hometown: Melbourne, FL
Major: Neuroscience, with minors in Music and Theater
Favorite Hopkins event: The annual streaking through the library during finals times (courtesy of the Outdoors Club).
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The past 48 hours have been so incredible. I can't even express how amazing Dr. Hendry (neuroscience professor extraordinaire) is. It was his birthday yesterday, so a group of his lab workers and groupies (collectively known as Team Hot Hendry!) went into action.
First, we decided to ambush him during the last 5 minutes of his Topics in Neuroscience lecture. We stormed in, with 2 cakes decorated in neuroscience-y themes, and a huge "Barbie" balloon. Kids in the back of the lecture hall held up individual signs that had been passed out by Meg, the TA, that formed the words "Happy Birthday!" We had the entire Topics class sing, and then everyone got cake. Realizing order would never be restored to class, Dr. Hendry dismissed them 5 minutes early.
All of us T.H.H. members walked back with him to his lab/office, and hung out for a while. I admired the decorations they had put in there earlier, which consisted of inordinate amounts of crepe paper. However, the birthday fun didn't end there.
That night, we all gathered around midnight and got back into the lab. As a birthday present, we cleaned the entire lab: washed down counters, organized and labeled drawers, finished washing and drying a lot of glassware, dusting off the brain slicing machine. However, while 6 of us were working on cleaning the lab, Beverly (who works in Dr. Hendry's lab) and Anu (who is Bev's roommate, an English major, and has never taken a neuro class in her life but still loves Hendry anyway) worked on his office. After an initial straightening up, they proceeded to cover the entire office in post-it notes. (Post-it notes with random messages are a common motif in the Hendry lab.) On his desk, on the walls, on the front of the desk, on his computer, on his keyboard, the desk chair, printer, clock, file cabinet, and (best of all) the floors, post-it note after post-it note fell into place.
It's pretty glorious
To top it all off, we all bought sleeping bags and pillows and camped out in the lab. Dr. Hendry usually arrives around 8 am, so we expected him to sort of stumble upon us. However, when we woke up at 8:30 because some of us had 9 am classes, he still wasn't there. Today was the ONE day he strolled in around 9:45. *Sigh*, oh well. Since we didn't get to sleep until 6:30 am, most of us just groggily walked back to our apartments and crashed. 9 AM organic chemistry section was just not happening today.
Tonight, we all took Dr. Hendry out to dinner at Bob Evans because, you know, old people eat there and breakfast food is awesome. The car that I was riding in consisted of Sahar (my roommate), Philicia, Yoo Mee (our trusty driver), and Dr. Hendry. We tortured him the whole way there and back by playing, and singing along to, the Backstreet Boys. Oh, it was amazing. It's ridiculous how quickly the lyrics to those songs come back even when you haven't heard them for 5 years. Dr. Hendry questioned the viability of the song in which the Backstreet Boys choose themselves as subjects (CD: "Backstreet's back, ALRIGHT!" Hendry: "Are they singing about themselves? Are they allowed to do that?") At Bob Evans, we all ordered breakfast food, except for Anu and Bev, who missed the point of Bob Evans and ordered soup and salad. We presented Dr. Hendry with a poster that Yoo Mee had drawn of all the adventures of T.H.H. It was really great.
So, now, it's before midnight, but I'm exhausted and going to bed. 2 hours of my 5 hours total of sleep last night were on a lab floor. It was totally worth it.
