Paramecium Cult

12/13/2025

12/13/2025

A 67-million-year-old T. rex probably isn't the best gift idea, BUT a visit to meet them definitely is. 🙂‍↕️🤩

Plan your next trip. ➡️ fieldmuseum.io/visit

12/13/2025

What do you do when no one sells insect nets designed to catch katydids, up in the trees, in the Amazon?
If you are Anthropology Professor Dr. Leila Porter, you design your own, and then get to work sewing and cutting PVC pipes, to make not just one, but 8 of them.
We hope she and her team catch lots of bugs! 🦋🐝🐞🐜🐛

12/13/2025

This semester changed me.

There were days I questioned everything my ability, my place here, whether I was strong enough to keep going. Being an autistic college student means carrying an invisible weight into every classroom, every conversation, every expectation that wasn’t built with people like me in mind. Sometimes just existing in those spaces took everything I had.

And yet… I did more than survive.

I earned straight A’s. Not because it was easy, but because I refused to give up on myself even when my brain was loud with doubt, even when burnout sat heavy on my chest. Those grades represent late nights, sensory overload, tears, growth, and learning how to advocate for myself instead of shrinking.

I also became CRLA Level 1 tutoring certified, something that still feels surreal to say out loud. It means my way of thinking, my patience, my empathy things I was once told were “too much” or “not enough” are valuable.

I am deeply thankful for my boss, who took a chance on me when I needed someone to believe I was capable. You didn’t just give me a job you taught me how to navigate social situations with patience and kindness, how to read rooms without fear, and how to trust myself in spaces that once felt impossible. That guidance changed me more than you know, and it’s shaped who I’m becoming both academically and personally.

Autism is part of every step of this journey. It has made things harder, yes but it has also made my victories feel sacred. This semester is proof that growth doesn’t come from masking or pretending to be someone else. It comes from being supported, believed in, and brave enough to keep going.

I am proud of myself. And for the first time in a long time, I truly believe I belong. 💙

12/07/2025

12/07/2025

I had one of those “wow, science is actually happening right in front of me” moments. I was looking at my own cheek cells under the microscope, just expecting the usual flat sheets of epithelial cells. But instead, I caught several of them actively going through mitosis. Like, real time division. My cells are doing their thing, right on the slide.

It’s wild to realize that something we learn about in textbooks prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase is constantly unfolding in our own bodies without us ever noticing. And then suddenly you see it chromosomes lined up, spindles pulling apart, two new daughter nuclei forming. It hits differently when it’s not a diagram… but your actual cells.

Moments like this remind me why I love being a scientist. There’s something incredibly grounding about watching life at its smallest scales just work.

Tiny cells, big reminder we’re all walking around carrying entire microscopic worlds.

((These are my cheek cells dyed with Methylene Blue to see them easier. This was after letting Methylene Blue sit on the slide for 10 minutes so the cells were saturated and the slide itself was no longer stained.))

12/05/2025

🧪✨ Where can you find a young scientist at a museum?
Easy posted up at every single cool exhibit like it’s a full time job.

Whether it’s fossils, meteorites, glowing bacteria, or that one interactive display everyone else walks past, I’m there taking notes, pressing buttons, and absolutely geeking out. Because science isn’t just something we study it’s something we chase, touch, and experience everywhere we go.

If you’re ever looking for me in a museum, just follow the trail of excited rambling, fun facts nobody asked for, and the occasional “WAIT YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!”

🔍💡 Stay curious, young scientists. The world is basically one giant exhibit waiting to be explored.

12/05/2025

Photosynthesis is a process where the synthesis of sugar (glucose) is carried out using sunlight (which acts as the radiant energy), carbon dioxide and water. Simply put, photosynthesis is a chemical process by which plants, algae as well as some species of bacteria produce their own food using sunlight, carbon dioxide and water.

The photosynthesis-cellular respiration relationship also explains why the two are necessary for the presence of life on the planet. To summarize the entire relationship; the radiant energy from the Sun is used to produce glucose during photosynthesis, and the same glucose is eventually used to produce usable energy in the course of cellular respiration.

12/04/2025

12/03/2025

12/03/2025