Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Lab Retreat Fun

At the end of May my lab went on a two-day lab retreat, which I organized pretty much single-handedly. I put a lot of effort into organizing it, so I was very happy to see that it went well and everybody enjoyed it.

The primary purpose of the lab retreat was to have in-depth discussions on selected few interesting topics in our area of research. The secondary purpose was to have a lot of fun. And a lot of fun we had :)

I was very happy (and proud) to see that all my labmates tried to make the lab retreat as entertaining as possible, and that they came up with many ingenious games even for the scientific part of the retreat. For example, one group created a game with similar mechanics to Magic: The Gathering based on theories of aging:

And to make it even more interesting, they traced the remaining life each player had on a lifespan graph:

I, on the other hand, organized an event called "Bio-Olympics". It included three activities: plate toss, rope pulling and building of a worm.

Plate toss. If you look carefully, you will see several agar plates up in the air:

Rope pulling:

My boss as a worm, and the rest of the lab behind her:

Lab on the rock:

In the evening we spent 2 hours playing science taboo:


And when we were done with it, we first played Mafia/Werewolf and then Jenga:

On the second day my awesome friend Nicole, who is an equally awesome personal coach, led a team building session for us. It was a highly valuable experience for us and we all loved it and truly appreciated Nicole's help. Thank you so much, Nicole!