When I interviewed my mentor she said something along the lines of, "Failure is unacceptable." At the moment I was really shocked because through my schooling career we've always been told that it is ok to fail and make mistakes. However, after I worked with her more, I realized what she meant. Failure IS unacceptable especially in the workplace. It's unacceptable to fail at creating a product that satisfies your client or fulfilling the responsibilities of your job. These are things that you HAVE to accomplish. But, it doesn't mean that you won't make mistakes. I've made mistakes during my externship, my mentor has make mistakes, Lauren has made mistake and sometimes our mistakes turn out really bad. But, we never "fail" because we (and really Dr. Ngo) find a way to work around our mistakes in order to accomplish the bigger goal. I'm really grateful to be in an environment where I can learn that and improve but, not be pressured to be perfect.
I'm incredibly grateful to my mentor, Dr. Truc Ngo. She is an amazing person. She set the bar incredibly high and expects everyone to rise up to the challenge. She answers all of my questions and is supportive. When she gives me a compliment, I know she genuinely means it because she tells it like it is. She's also really kind and funny and I enjoy working with her. I'm also appreciative of Lauren. She oftentimes is the only other person working in the lab and is the main source of my human interaction. Whenever I have questions about life or college or going into the workforce I always ask her because she's been through all of that (and recently) and she always gives me an honest answer. High school, at least at HTHI, has taught me how to ask questions. I'm very much an introvert and shy. It took time and willpower to become more comfortable asking questions. I have to remind myself that I am not a graduate student, like my coworker, I'm not even a current college student. I am a high school intern. I am not expected to go in knowing anything. It would be idiotic to not ask questions.
As for the similarities between HTHI projects and externship, there are only a few. Projects stress communication and collaboration. I usually work by myself in the basement lab unless Lauren is there (she works part-time). I don't really have anyone to collaborate with besides myself however, communicating with my mentor is incredibly important. The research project that I am helping with has real world impact. It's something to be taken very seriously and the experiments involved with it should be handled carefully. With projects at school, none of them have the same kind of impact. I can understand how certain school projects improve my skill-sets and knowledge but, they don't have an effect on the real world. Projects however, have helped me learn how to manage my time efficiently and learn independently. Both of those are skills I regularly rely on during externship. I basically walked into this internship with almost no real lab experience. I'm not including the labs, we've done in Physics, Biology, and Chemistry because those weren't done in a real lab setting. I wasn't really sure what to expect or what I was doing.
When you're conducting research, you have to be super careful and meticulous. You don't want your data to be messed up. This is something you're publishing, you can't take it lightly. So, there's a lot of steps involved in taking what seems like the simplest measurement. Thankfully, I wasn't just thrown to the wolves (or lab experiments, in this case). My mentor worked with me through each step until I felt confident that I could complete it and the quality of my work satisfied her. It also helps that Dr. Ngo (my mentor) is really good at providing detailed instruction and providing me with understandable answers to whatever questions I have. So is Lauren, who works part-time and comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Here's some photos from my week at USD so far. I actually started my internship early. I went on Monday and Wednesday afternoons for a few weeks beforehand. During that time I was helping out with next semester's Design of Coffee Class (I took this class that she taught last semester at USD). I created the budgeting plan and did inventory. Afterwards, I started working on the data analysis of Dr. Ngo's current research project, which, among other things, is what I'm currently working on.
This research project (which is really cool btw) studies the impregnation of an inflammatory drug (flurbiprofen) onto a PMMA sample and how it releases in the body. PMMA is a material commonly used for creating bone implants. The idea is that if the inflammatory drug is released from the implant inside of the body, it will greatly reduce the risk for an infection after surgery. So what have I been doing? I have been taking the data and analyzing it in order for us to understand the information the data gives us. (The first time I've ever analyzed data like this before btw) On Tuesday was the first time I worked directly with the chemicals and samples in order to gather data in the lab downstairs. I felt like a doctor because I had gloves on and was using a syringe to draw the liquid :) Honestly, I'm really excited to see where the research goes from here and learning about this research and how to do research. Since this is the first time I've done lab work like this I'm a bit nervous but, after shadowing two different people and working in the lab for a full day with Lauren I'm pretty confident I can independently continue to do the measurements henceforth. And hopefully I can also work on some Coffee Class stuff later on. I will be interning at Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering, University of San Diego with Dr. Truc Ngo. I will be helping out with her current research project.
I'm super excited! I'm going to be able to conduct research that will be beneficial to the biomedical community. However, I've never quite done something like that before so I'm nervous about messing up. |