Goals

Internship Goals 

Learning Goal #1: Understand the fundamentals of research i.e. procedures and protocols

What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?

1. Watching others

2. being involved in multiple studies

3. discussion with lab members about grants or other research essentials

I feel like I have completed all of these tasks listed above. The next thing I can do is make sure I am continuing to stay involved in all of the studies. 

At this point, I have met the goal of understanding the fundamentals of research. I might continue with the research this summer and into the next semester.  

Learning Goal #2: Be able to appropriately analyze data and explain it to colleagues and/or write about it

What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?

1. learning procedures

2. completing assessments

3. discussion and engaging in statistical analyzes and graph making, presenting and discussing work with lab members.

I have learned a lot of procedures but I would like still learn more. I will continue to ask questions outside my comfort zone to get more experience. 

 I have met the goal of analyzing data for this lab. I will use this skill to present the data for my LHSI showcase. 

Learning Goal #3: Use professional behavior and practices in the workplace, including demonstrating professional communication and applying problem-solving skills

What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?

1. open communication while working through procedures and data about any questions

2 learning field-specific vocabulary in writing and presenting

I have reached the goal of demonstrating professional communication and applying problem-solving skills. With the showcase coming up, I will show that I have developed field-specific vocabulary in writing and presenting the data that I have been gathering over the past couple of months. 

Career Goals 

My current academic goals is to apply to graduate school and earn my masters degree. I am still debating on if I want to go straight to manufacturing after my undergrad or if I want to spend an extra year for my masters. It depends on if I get a manufacturing internship this summer and what the company advises me to do. Another deciding factor is if I need another year to figure out what I want to do with Biomedical Engineering. 

What I am currently doing to help me decide these factors is talking with my co workers about research and reflecting on if I want to focus on research for my career or go into manufacturing.  I am also talking with my advisor to see where my strength and preferences fit into. 

Before I was accepted into LHSI, I reflected on my current career goals and how becoming part of LHSI would help these goals. After reviewing my current goals, I feel like LHSI has helped me figure out my career path and narrow my choices. Above I talked about possibly earning my master's and before LHSI I also discussed the 5-year program. After working for a couple of months with my lab, I have decided to sign up for my master's program at the end of this semester. Throughout these couple of months, I have enjoyed doing research and I feel like it would be an excellent decision for me.

I feel like I have learned what I needed to from LHSI. It was helpful to work on tasks that were part of my research, but what helped me the most was asking my co-workers questions about research in general to build a basic foundation of what it means to be a researcher. After months of asking these questions, I feel like I may be interested in research later on in my career or at least use some of the techniques that were done in this lab. 

In my goals before I got into LHSI, I talked about possibly joining MURI, another summer internship program, however, I do not plan on doing this since LHSI gave me plenty of experience with research. A way that I have increased my overall insight with research was working more hours in my lab. I felt like I was missing out too much on things If I would miss a week which was why I tried to come in every three days a week. I felt like I knew what I needed to do without asking questions the more I came in. 

This summer I am hoping to find an internship that is more on the industry side to see how it compares to the research I did this year. Next year will be my senior year, so I will continue taking more normal classes and work on my capstone project. Additionally, I will take master level classes to get a head start on my master's. 

My internship has allowed me to understand what doing research truly means. I think it has not changed my career path but has expanded the choices that I will have later on in my career. 

I will still not be too confident in using my knowledge to make career decisions since I still feel like I do not have experience in different career choices in my field since I will become an engineer. I do not know what type of engineer I want to become. 

Different Goals? 

My overall goals have stayed roughly the same from the beginning of LHSI to now. I am still trying to figure out if I want to go into research or the industry. Currently, I am leaning towards doing research and masters but that still could change by the end of this semester. 

By working backwards from my big career goal, I can start breaking tasks down. The month I will start applying to internships that revolve more around the industry. By the end of this spring semester, I would like to be very comforable with the research that I am currently working. By the end of next year, I would like to have completed all of my BME classes so I can graduate. All of these tasks will help me figure out what I want to do at the end of my academic journey.