Expecting the Unexpected
Coming into my first research experience two (was it really just two?) weeks ago, I didn’t really know what to expect, except that this was going to be a very hands-on experience and that I would be learning a lot. But I don’t think I quite expected just how much I would be learning. These past couple of weeks I’ve learned how to fix and stain embryos, how to inject embryos with morpholinos, and how to prepare specimens following immunohistochemistry processes, among countless the other basic skills needed in our lab. I’ve also been spending quite a bit of time reading articles and books, getting up to speed on the research that has already been done in our field (neural crest cells in cardiac development).
But even now, I’m still not always sure what to expect from day to day. Working with live animals, even animals as small as zebrafish, presents many unexpected work-schedules, situations or challenges. This sometimes means coming back at 9:30pm to set up fish so that in the morning they’ll (hopefully) mate and produce embryos for injections. Just this past week, though, I crawled out of bed at what seemed like the crack of dawn to get to lab at eight in the morning to do zebrafish embryo injections. Unfortunately, it turned out the fish I had set up the night before didn’t feel like mating that morning.
Now that I’ve accumulated many practical skills, I hope to spend the next several weeks developing my skills as a researcher. I want to spend time learning how to interpret the results of the experiments I’m helping to carry out now, how to take those results forward and ask intriguing questions of them, and ultimately, how to design and set up a method to finding the answers to those questions.
