This past Friday was my last day working at my lab for this semester (I'll be going to Korea for the winter break and will be returning to the same lab in January). To give you a recap, I began working as a research volunteer at one of the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs in September. I've been working roughly 18 hours in the space of three days, and to tell you the truth, it's been brutal. I've worked at numerous other labs in the past years but none of them have come close to the workload my current lab puts on me. A typical week at the lab usually consists of doing a purification of plasmids, digestions, ligations, transformations, cracking gels, gel extractions, sequencing, etc. (steps to clone certain fragments in e.coli cells). And that's only one of the projects I'm working on. The other project involves extracting DNA from flies, but that project has been put on hold for the moment while I work on cloning. Although it's been a rough few months, I have learned so much from working in the lab- the work even corresponds to the material we learned in bio 1AL! And I feel very fortunate that I was able to find a lab that I am comfortable in and enjoy being in.
When I first started working there, it was very awkward- there was no one my age and everyone seemed so intimidating. I was put on the spot a lot by a few of the people who worked in the lab- when they would ask me about certain protocols or measurements that I wasn't sure how to do. After a month however, another student joined the lab who was a year older than me, and we hit it off immediately. We were put on the same project together so it was nice to have somebody to talk to, to complain to, and to share the pain with. A few months passed and I realized that I had gotten close to all of the people in the lab and I was finally a member of their intimate group. What was once awkward and intimidating was now a place to see friends and mentors- a group of people that I came to admire and appreciate. I have decided to try for an honors thesis- so we'll see how that goes ;)
If you have any questions about lab/research, don't hesitate to ask!
-K
how did you get hooked up with an internship?! I want one so badly but there are none out there, or at least none that will take a newbie like me. Did you have an internship your freshman year? I have pretty much no lab experience outside the classroom, and I'm getting worried that the longer I wait the harder it will be to land a research job and get into med school :( HELP ME K
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