Expectations
I happened to look at the Howard Hughes Schedule earlier today, and it turns out that I’m two blogs behind. So here I am now, on my lunch break, typing furiously in an attempt to finish one of them. The topic for this blog is supposed to be “What are your expectations for your summer research”. I’ve read a lot of the other blogs earlier today (one of the benefits of procrastination) and everyone seemed to say the same thing: People expect to benefit tremendously personally from their research experience, be it through learning more about the research process or investigating a career in research, to familiarize themselves with lab procedures and come out of this experience different somehow – more mature, more knowledgeable, more everything. “More everything” is apparently the key to a successful career in science, or at least a successful summer internship.
You have to read extensively in your field. I remember at the beginning of the summer I thought that work would end at 4:00 or 5:00 or whenever I happened to leave the lab. But that’s not really true. Since I just come out of my freshman year and haven’t taken specialized courses, I feel like I have to read constantly to catch up in my general knowledge base. Google is useful for this, Google Scholar even more so. I’m constantly learning. I’m becoming more passionate about my labwork without really realizing it – I dissect caterpillars at work and come home to my pet caterpillar, now a pet pupa (He/She will become a butterfly in 8-10 days!). I boil spaghetti in exactly 500 millimolar sodium concentration.
I should probably get back to my expectations for my summer research, because I need to stain some imaginal disks (pre-wings) for mounting. I just want to learn all summer. I would like to learn something that no one knows right now, no matter how small that piece of information may be. I’ll be happy with my summer research experience if I come away knowing significantly more than I do now.
