Goals & Learning

As of right now, I am unsure what I want to do after getting my undergraduate degree, but I am sure that I want to go to graduate school. I want to go to graduate school so I can get a deeper understanding of whatever I go into and specialize in my field of work. Having a graduate degree will also allow me to have better career opportunities. Overall, I am unsure of what I want to go into, but this is why I am in LHSI. I am trying to figure out if I like research and if this is something I would want to go into. I truly believe that experience is the best way to know if you like something, so I am grateful to have this opportunity. This year I will find out if research is for me by just learning about the process and being willing to learn as much as I can. After being in the lab for more than a semester, I have learned that I love the research process. At the same time, my forensic course work has made me interested in this field. Hopefully, being in the lab for the rest of the year and the summer will give me more research experience, which will guide me to what graduate school path I should follow. Additionally, maybe this summer I will try to visit a forensic science research lab, to see how I like that type of research. Although I have learned to love microbiology from the research that I do. I have developed my career goals slightly, but I am still stuck on picking a solid plan. I am confident that my experiences will guide me to the correct decision eventually, and I am grateful for this opportunity. 

 In March, edit your October response to share how your internship experience confirmed or changed your career planning journey and goals. How confident do you feel in using your self-knowledge and preferences to make career-related decisions now?

In March, we will send you the goals you stated on your LHSI application. Review and add how your goals changed from a year ago or what progress have you made. Add what you will do this summer and during the rest of your time at IU Indianapolis to reach your career goals. Use your responses to the "Setting Goals: What's Next?" Canvas assignment from January.

When I first applied to LHSI in March 2024, my career goals were mostly the same as they are now. During that time, my options were to either get a job directly after graduating in a forensics position or go to graduate school to get my PhD in chemistry. Now I know that I enjoy research and I plan on going to graduate school no matter what, either to get my master's degree in forensic science or going into a PhD program. Between last year and now, I have made the progress of knowing that I like research and find it to be a rewarding field. This narrows my options a bit, and I think graduate school, especially a master's, would give me more time to decide on a career. 

By this spring, I want to try to reach out to a forensics lab to see if I can come in and see what they do research-wise. To do this, I will have to read up on the labs at the university and maybe even state labs to see if they have any openings. Since I know I like research from my current lab, I want to see if I like forensic research.  During this summer I plan on continuing my research at my current lab, which will help me continue to develop my lab skills and my knowledge on the research process. By this time next year, I hope to have decided on what path I want to take and hopefully have applied to graduate school by then. Since that will be my last semester, I will be preparing to graduate as well.  

Learning Goal #1: Learn if research is something I am interested in for a future career 

Relevance: This will help guide me in what career I would want in the future through exposure. 

Action Plan:  Working with the individual projects of Dr. Tanner and Alyssa to see the process a scientist uses in their work daily. Doing bench work and practicing basic lab practices to see if I like the day-to-day process of research. By researching things for tiny projects I am given, like learning how to grow a certain bacterium

For me it feels like I have achieved this goal. During my time at my internship site, I have grown to love research. I am excited to come in, do the experiments, and see the results each week.  Additionally, this semester I have started to do protocols on my own, which has immersed me in the research experience. To find this out, I have had some bad and good days. The day was particularly difficult for me since I could not focus on the protocol and I kept messing it up. Even though it was a rough day I still enjoyed the results from that experiment since it provided valuable information on our project. Although I feel like I have achieved this goal, while I continue my research, I will still evaluate if I like research or if my feelings have changed. 

Learning Goal #2: Learn about how the scientific process works in a lab setting and how experiments are formed.

Relevance: This will help me become a better scientist overall professionally and can help me think like a scientist more through practice.

Action Plan: Attending lab meetings will expose me to how others perform their research and the process they use to meet their research goals. Learning to troubleshoot in the lab through the project I work on when things do not go as planned. Project planning for what I will do each week will help me learn how to plan out a scientific process to meet research goals.

Throughout the past semester and a half, I feel like I have also accomplished this goal, but there is more to learn. From each of the experiments that I do, I learn about the need for controls, what the data means, and what to test for next. Often my supervisors will discuss the results with me and we will have a conversation on what they mean and what to do next. One accomplishment I had was recent. I was working on a qPCR and I was tasked with organizing and interpreting the results to figure out which primers worked best. My supervisors thought I did a good job analyzing the results, I now feel more comfortable when needing to analyze the results since I have done it before.   To continue to work on this goal, doing experiments is what will help me learn most about the scientific process. In the future I can ask more questions about analyzing the results to further develop this skill.  

Learning Goal #3: Learning more about techniques used in a lab setting and more about biological research. 

Relevance: This will help me strengthen lab skills or learn new ones. I will also become a more well-rounded scientist since I am not exposed to this specific field in coursework.

Action Plan: Training will help me learn how to do basic lab techniques and learn how they are used in biological research.  By working on the different projects people in the lab have I will be able to learn different areas since they all have such unique projects, making me more well-rounded in my biological research knowledge. Lab meetings will help me learn about more advanced lab techniques and how others apply them to their research.

While being at my internship site I have learned all new kinds of laboratory techniques, ranging from microbiology to microscopy. One of the techniques was both an accomplishment and a difficulty for me. In our lab we work with phages, and to quantify the amount we have in our media, we do a technique called titering. The first or second time I ever did this technique, it had contamination which made the results unusable. The next time we did the technique, I ensured there was no contamination and it worked, which was so rewarding. I will continue to work on this goal, by learning as much as I can while I am there. It helps that we have a few experiments in the works, so I am excited to learn as I work on these experiments.