Success and Challenges

An internship is as much an exploration of a career as it is an exploration of yourself. As an intern so far I have discovered a few strengths as well as faced a few challenges.

My successes:

• Learning how to read scientific articles

• Learning how to search for articles in PubMed

• Learning how to use the IU Library system to request articles and journal access

• Understanding basic neuroanatomy and being able to relate structures to functions

• Learning how to navigate scanned images of slides through a new software

• Communicating with my mentors

• Learning how to ask for clarification

My success are my ability to be flexible and ready to learn each day. I have realized that science is all about learning, understanding, then relearning and then understanding again. Getting used to this dynamic nature of research takes time since in the academic realm we have a limit as to what we need to understand and what is beyond the scope of the class. Independent learning is an important skill that will inevitably prove useful in the future. Reading an article is sometimes not as complex as finding the article and then being able to access it. So the independent problem solving as to how to search for the articles and request them has helped me be more self sufficient.

My challenges:

• Being able to balance internship and academic priorities

• Keeping up with the literature

So far, my biggest challenge has been my time management skills between the internship and my other commitments. The added complexity of online and in-person classes and the ever changing schedules, make it difficult to balance my work times. Moreover, sometimes the exam dates all fall in one week and I have to prioritize them over my internship. I remember last semester, my exams and essays coming due in the same week I became very overwhelmed. I ended up working from home that week. Due to incidents like these, I feel as if I am not dedicating sufficient time to my research as I would have done under more normal situations. This semester, I am working on overcoming this challenge by being proactive about both my academic and research related work and planning carefully. After last semester, I evolved to be more flexible and ready to accommodate as quickly as possible. Hopefully this will help me be more productive this semester.

My other challenge is keeping up with the scientific knowledge. During my first few weeks I tried to look up and read about everything I heard or saw at the lab. Needless the say that became very time intensive and had to learn to prioritize what I want to focus on. This semester, I am working on writing a scientific paper and so I have a goal and can prioritize what to read. Even then new articles are mentioned by my mentors and I have to spend some more time reading them. My new strategy is to create a to-do list and work through them whenever I have time.

New successes:

• Be more flexible with my schedule to accommodate for the hybrid nature of classes. My classes have me coming in for in person sessions some weeks while not others and balancing all of that with online classes and internship time has been a little difficult.

• Learning how to make a poster

• Learning how to write an abstract

• Learning how to use imaging software and manipulate an image to highlight your observations

New challenges:

• Writing in a style that is consistent with professional scientific literature

• Realizing which points are useful to emphasize and which are not

• Finding appropriate evidence for my paper