Parts Is Parts

A typical day at work for me in the food science lab usually consists of doing plasma extractions for my honors project, washing glassware, and making solvents, but today was not a typical day of work. Currently, we are in the process of moving to a larger lab. The previous professor in that lab left a large amount of his stuff there and we (the other people that work in the lab and I) have the responsibility of cleaning it out. One of the things that he chose to leave behind was freeze dried baboon parts….yup, that’s right, monkeys!!!!

What exactly would someone be doing with baboons???? I believe he was doing some sort of research on their bones. Anyway, we had to figure out what to do with these random baboon parts and it wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. Since they are animal parts they are considered to be biohazard and cannot just be thrown in the trash so we called over to the vet school to see how we should dispose of these animal parts. They said they would have to be incinerated, but first we would have to take them out of their plastic containers and put them in paper bags since plastic can’t go into the incinerator.

All of us in the lab group thought, great, not only do we have to dispose of the baboon parts but we first have to take them out of their containers!!!! We were all freaking out at this point because this is about the weirdest thing that any of us have had to do before, and we were all hesitant to start. Finally, we removed all the parts and put them in the paper bags and took them to the incinerator. Needless to say, this was a very interesting day at work for me.

--Teryn

Ready, Set, Sell

Hello Everyone! My name is Kim Ziarko and I am a junior majoring in Foods and Nutrition in Business. Tuesday night I had my final presentation of the semester in my Selling Agriculture Business class (AGECON 331). This special night is called Ready, Set, Sell-or RSS for short- where it gives students an experience in professional selling. We all were asked to dress business professional, network and present our sales pitch to sale professionals. Assignments for the class were picking a product or service in a field of your interest and develop a professional sales presentation on it. I chose Organic Coffee Beans from El Salvador! To gain selling skills, you are asked to interview a sales professional and spend a day with him/her at the company to get a feel for their product or service. I was able to visit Uncommon Grounds Coffee Roaster in Saugatuck, Michigan. It was so much fun to see the shop and what they deal with on an everyday basis. The rest of the homework also leads up to RSS to prepare you for every step of the presentation. You might think, “How does this relate to me?” Easy. At one point in our lives we will all be selling ourselves to accomplish one of our goals in life. It could be asking to receive a grant for an experiment or trying to sell a new product you helped concoct in the test kitchen. This class helped my selling skills and did a great job preparing me for the future when I will need to make a professional sales presentation.