I can’t believe my internship is coming to a close soon! The past few weeks have flown by so quickly, and the knowledge I have gained during this time has been incredible. I have progressed greatly in my learning goals. The first goal was to strengthen my biological research skills. From learning how to genotype samples, grow up a bacteria culture, perform tail-vein injections, and manage many, many cell culture plates at once, I feel like I have experienced a wide array of techniques that are crucial to molecular and cellular biology research. The second was to build upon prior knowledge of cancer biology mechanisms. While I have come to understand the mechanisms proposed by my lab, I have also come to the realization of how numerous and complex the mechanism of cancer are. There are seemingly endless pathways and signaling molecules that result in the same uncontrollable cell growth. My other goals include interpersonal and communication skills, which I have the opportunity to practice with my lab mates, as collaboration is plentiful in our lab.
While it may be difficult to know if one is truly learning something, I have found it helpful to keep track of my progress using notebooks. My lab notebook contains everything I have done in the lab and the subsequent results. Flipping through it, I see how many techniques I have participated in over the past weeks. I also keep a personal notebook where I take notes on general biological concepts and technique protocols.
I have been intensely working on qPCR (explained in previous post). Performing qPCR is the last step in a multi-step protocol that includes RNA isolation from tissue and cDNA synthesis. While it is lengthy and sometimes frustrating, it is amazing to see the results and interpret them to something meaningful. This technique requires critical thinking and problem solving. When a plate doesn’t yield clean results, I try to think of possible errors that could have caused this. For example, poor pipetting, human error, or sample contamination are a few reasons for undesirable qPCR results.
I believe this experience has helped my leadership skills immensely. My independent work skills have greatly improved this summer. Majority of the bench work and cell culture I am responsible for I perform alone. This has called me to take notes when instructions or demonstrations are being given in order to replicate it as perfectly as possible. Critical and logical thinking are crucial components to being able to problem solve when unexpected issues arise or mistakes are made.
The lab I have been interning is majority male, with one other female in the lab. This is a common occurrence across scientific fields and work places. While most people do not think of women when they think of a scientist, I am trying to break this misconception by expressing my interest and passion for science during my internship.
This opportunity to gain exposure in a biomedical research lab has been incredibly enriching and will serve me graciously in numerous areas of my life. Academically, my internship allowed me to think critically about the biological concepts behind each lab technqiue and brought the information I’ve seen in textbooks to life. I plan on continuing my research involvement on campus this fall through an independent study in Dr. Earls’ lab, which I was involved in last year as well. Last but certainly not least, my internship experience has strengthened my desire to pursue a MD/PhD degree following my undergraduate program. I love performing biomedical research and believe I would greatly enjoy combining my research fascination with the clinical aspect of medicine.