How does this goal fit into your career journey or prepare you for the future?
I am on a pre-med track and am working to narrow down what fields I might be interested in working in. I know I want to work in pediatrics but do not have any specific fields in mind outside of that, so I am hoping that this internship will expose me to some different aspects of healthcare careers.
What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?
1. Meeting with professionals in the lab that are a part of these fields.
2. Set up shadowing/clinic observation hours.
3. Read about the different positions
Goal Progress
I have interacted with several professionals in the field of physical therapy and have learned about some of the different subfields they are a part of. I have also read about a lot of different aspects of this field to gain a deeper understanding. I have not done any formal shadowing hours, but I was a test subject for a physical therapy doctoral student from Texas, which was a really cool experience!
How does this goal fit into your career journey or prepare you for the future?
With the goal of working in healthcare, I will need lab and research skills for the rest of my life. I also know that I will have to work both alongside peers and individually for different projects in the future, so being able to build on these skills now will be very beneficial.
What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?
1. Attending weekly lab meetings
2. Meeting with advisor 1:1 bi-monthly
3. Working with other research assistants to analyze stroke pattern data and graphs and other data collection activities
Goal Progress
I attend in-person meetings once a week with members of my lab team and also check in with my supervisors regularly outside of those meetings. We work together collaboratively on our stroke pattern analyses and are in the beginning stages of working on a formal paper to present our findings.
How does this goal fit into your career journey or prepare you for the future?
Even though I want to work on the patient side of healthcare and not necessarily on the research side, I know I will have to write different reports and collaborate on different projects in med school and in my career. I have written research papers for college classes before, but obviously not to the level that these professional papers are written, so it will be cool to see what all goes into these extensive papers.
What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?
1. Working with other interns and research assistants to develop the results section of the manuscript
2. Read current published manuscripts from the lab
3. Review grant submission proposals
Goal Progress
I have been working with the other members of the lab to diligently finish up the analysis part of our research so that we can begin working on compiling the results. We are in the beginning stages of writing a paper and I will also be helping with a project proposal this summer. I have read through previous papers submitted by the lab in order to gain a good understanding of what I will be contributing once we start on the paper.
I have applied for additional funding from IUI in order to continue at my lab site this summer and next school year. Regardless of whether I receive this funding, I will still be collaborating on the paper we are starting on and will have a published work before my time in undergrad is over!
My current goals after undergrad include attending medical school and eventually becoming a physician in the field of pediatrics. I have wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember and I am confident that I want to work with kids in my forever job. I have recently been considering doing a graduate program before attending medical school, but I have not fully committed to that idea yet. This year I am hoping to get some more perspective in the research aspect of the medical field to see if that might be something I am interested in.
After taking the skills assessment, I have looked more at which skills I have been building on so far during my internship and which skills I would like to focus on more. I have been doing really well with completing my tasks independently but also asking for help if I need it. I have also built on my work ethic and strive to complete my work well and efficiently. Some skills I would like to focus on more are confronting failure and communication with professionals, especially those outside of my lab. I tend to like to play it safe and avoid failure, so I would like to become more comfortable with doing tasks that may yield unfavorable results. Failure is a big learning tool and I think learning how to accept failure and how to move on from it will be very beneficial for my future as a physician. We have also recently been collaborating with a lab in Texas, so I have had the opportunity to communicate with more professionals in the field of physical therapy. I would like to be more confident in these interactions as communication in general is really important for my future. In order to improve my communication, I plan to frequently practice presenting my research to my friends or even just to myself, as I will have to present my research for the LHSI showcase and potentially in the future with grant proposals and other presentation opportunities. I will also be looking for more avenues to collaborate with other professionals in order to gain more professional communication experience, which I think will also boost my confidence in this area.
This internship has really benefited my understanding of physics, which is not something I anticipated coming into this lab. I had never really thought about how applicable the concepts I have been learning in physics are to my future as a physician. My lab is doing several studies involving manual therapy using a few different devices and most of my role has focused on analyzing the force graphs from these devices. It has been really interesting to get a new perspective on how my coursework that does not seem particularly relevant can actually play a big role in what I do in the future.
2nd Semester Learning Updates
I have felt a lot more confident in my communication skills when collaborating with others, especially those in professional positions. This is something I really worked hard on during my first semester and I have definitely seen improvement. I have also confronted failure and learned to better ask for assistance when I need it. Though I have been in this lab for nearly a year, there are still aspects of the project that I find challenging. Especially with the second device analysis that we have been doing recently, it is really helpful to get input from one of the physical therapists in our lab, as she has a lot more knowledge and experience in this realm. Learning to utilize my resources and ask for help is another skill I wanted to improve on, and I think I have done that this year.
Additionally, I do not have a lot of other input about the benefits to my coursework outside of physics. As I moved into my second semester of physics, I noticed that projects in this lab have given me additional background information to apply towards topics I am learning about in class.