Contribution
Another blog. Blogging was definitely not part of my expectations for research this summer, but oh well.
I can’t say that I have any concrete expectations for my summer research. Concrete expectations after all are almost always confounded by unexpected circumstances, especially in research, in which unexpected results and challenges seem to be the norm. In general, I hope that I can reasonably expect this summer to make some small but substantiated contribution to my lab and to the field (with considerable emphasis on small); this, I think, is the general purpose of any research, even research conducted during the course of a (painfully short) summer internship. Any contribution I could make to my lab is of course much smaller than the great benefits I not only expect, but already know, I’ll get from the internship in education and introduction to new techniques. Already the program has introduced me to a whole new world of systems neuroscience (before the internship I was almost exclusively interested in the molecular and genetic areas of the field) and a number of really cool techniques (two-photon microscopy is awesome).
HF
