Internship

Workplace

One important skill I have brought with me to my internship is teamwork and communication. These two skills are imperative for working in a professional lab. Often, there will be multiple people working together on one behavioral task, and being able to work well with that person, and communicate with them is imperative. Since a lot of the work done in the lab is behavioral work with rats, it's important to be able to know how to handle them. Most tasks take up to two weeks to do at a time and often have to be performed daily for each experimental group. Because of this, communication is important to know what was done each day in order to keep everyone informed. Recently, I have been working on better communication skills for myself. Asking questions has always been something I have struggled with, but I am getting more comfortable asking questions when I need help, as I wouldn't want to mess up running a task. Communication and asking for help are two important skills in any career, and strengthening those skills now will lead me to be a better team member in the future. 

Throughout the year, I have become a reliable and independent team member that my manager and coworkers can rely on. I have contributed to my project by collecting and analyzing data, running experiments, and helping take care of the animals. 

Successes and Challenges

One of the wins so far is when I was able to weigh ethanol bottles on my own. One of the actions I used was asking clarifying questions to my lab manager to ensure I was correctly performing the tasks. 

Another “win” during my experience so far was doing data analysis after we collected data for the ethanol drinking. To do this, I asked other students to clarify what they have done in the past to perform this task successfully, and used our protocol to ensure that I was doing the correct data analysis technique based on the data variables we were measuring.

I have been successful at becoming more independent when working. I am learning how to do things on my own and starting to do things without having to ask for help or permission. For example, I am able to fill, weigh, and give the animals their alcohol bottles without having to be asked to do this. Gaining comfortability with what I am doing in the lab is very rewarding!

One of the things that has been the most challenging for me is managing my time when it comes to going class, homework, and work for the internship. These were challenges for me because this semester I had more responsibilities to balance than past semesters. To overcome this, I will keep my planner updated and ask from support from lab if I need extra time for my assignments or for self-care. 

Another challenge I have is feeling overwhelmed with learning new tasks during my internship. For example, when I first learned how to do data analysis for the ethanol drinking, I was a little confused on which columns to look for the correct data to analyze. This was a challenge for me because I had never done data analysis, but to overcome this I will continue to perform this task and ask from support from my lab manager and other students in the lab.