My Internship

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is characterized by progressive decline in kidney function and one of the most common side effects is increased bone fragility. People who have CKD, therefore, have an increased risk of bone fracture and, if a fracture occurs, their chances of mortality are greatly increased. Our lab focuses on the treatment of bone fragility in CKD and more specifically my project focuses on how supplementation with dietary fiber impacts microarchitecture, bone formation, and bone mechanical properties in rats with CKD. Rats were studied in earlier (30 weeks) and later (32 weeks) stages of disease progression. Three groups were studied – CKD, CKD with dietary inulin fiber, and non-CKD healthy animals. Microarchitecture was assessed via micro-CT. Bones were then embedded in hard plastic, sectioned and bone formation was analyzed by histology. Finally, the bones were mechanically tested via three-point bending. Overall, these data will provide insight into the structural, cellular, and mechanical changes caused by CKD and whether fiber supplementation improves bone parameters in progressive CKD. This research shows that a dietary fiber could possibly be used in combination therapy to treat CKD. The treatment of CKD costs roughly 87 million dollars a year for Americans and any treatment that lowers the severity of symptoms is going to lower that cost. Dietary fiber supplements didn't cure the CKD, but if the overall treatment can cost less, then everyone will be paying less.

Learning and Skills

This internship will allow me to use my passion for research with a real world application. I have always known that I would really like doing research and having an opportunity to do real research in a real lab on a subject I don't normally study is really awesome. I love widening my field of knowledge to make sure I experience as much as I can before focusing on something later in my career. I will also be able to use my detail-oriented mind to it's fullest and despite the tasks possibly being long and monotonous, I can understand what I am doing and how it can generate real results.

I would like to gain the necessary skills and habits that are essential when working in a laboratory setting. A lot of the laboratory experience that I have now has only been acquired in a classroom and may not transfer one-to-one to what working in a real lab is like. There are just some things about a job that you can't know or learn without actually doing it, and I would like to gain enough experience to know what those things are. More specifically though, I would like to gain the skills necessary to complete a basic study, and know all of the tasks that go into it. Things like, scanning bones using the CT machine, imaging the bones from the scan, cutting the bones into thin slices and viewing them on a microscope. I would also like to grow in the relationships with the other people working in the lab. I know that we are all there for work, but we aren't all doing the same projects and I feel that talking to others will grant me a new insight into what other possible jobs I could be doing in the future.

I don't expect my contributions to be ground breaking or anything, but I would like to do as much as I can, and it seems like I am being given all the resources to do that. Most of my contributions so far have been turning all of the images and microscope slides into actual numbers that are useful to the study that they pertain to. I expect that this will account for a majority of what I contribute because most of the time it is the last step and it is the most visual part that is easy to understand. Most of these kinds of task are also not very difficult, they just take a lot of time. So I expect to do various other tasks that may lead up to the final steps that I have been doing, but the data I get at the end should be pretty similar to what I am doing now.

As far as what I am excited for as I continue to do research in this lab, I am eager to work on a project on my own. As much as I like the comfort of knowing that my supervisor is there so that if I am unsure on anything they can help me, I also know that they probably have other things they need to be doing. Also, circumstances have allowed for me to be able to take a whole project in late November, so I am hoping to learn the couple of steps that I am going to be doing on that soon. I am excited to learn the different things I need to know before I start imaging and I am I excited to be with a study from nearly it's very beginning.

Many concepts that I have learned in the classroom have applied very directly to the work that I am doing such as know what drug is being tested on the rats or even what types of cells are doing what on the surface of the bones. I think this sort of research is a great supplement to my classwork because even though there is a lot that translates, there is so much more that doesn't. Every time I hear about a new study or what another study is looking for, I am met with a new load of information that is all bone specific that I should know before I get started. It really showed me how deep a subject can go. I learned about bones a little bit in my freshman year, and nothing too much out side of that, and now I am more knowledgeable about bones than I ever thought I would be. This applies to almost every detail of science as well, each little part can go as deep as I have gone into bones. It has given me a real appreciation for what we learn in the classroom and a bit of clarity on how big the science world really is when what we are working with is so small. It seems like there is almost no end to what can be accomplished through science and it's one of the reasons I am so interested in it in the first place.

I have learned many things as my internship has progressed through this semester. From the use of the machines and computer programs that are essential to doing our research to just learning that I actually enjoy doing research at all, this has been a learning experience from the start. One of the main things I learned though was how much I enjoy doing the meticulous and detail oriented work that we do in the lab. I always thought that I would like a job where I had to focus to make sure I got the details right, but to actually experience it has been eye opening. I've learned with certainty that I would like to do something in this general field at least, and i know I will enjoy this kind of work if I keep the same work ethic and dedication to science that I have.

I think the two skills that I have grown most in and used the most this year at my internship were Independence and Communication. I think using both of these skills lead me having a large impact on the amount of work I was able to get done and provide a greater contribution to the project that I am on. A lot of the work that I have done this year has been largely independent which means that I need to be very familiar with the equipment and terminology being used around the project that I am working on. I thought this would be a very daunting task, but it actually proved to be very natural and even more interesting that I had thought. This led me to having my own amount of independence in the lab and being trusted to do tasks on my own was a big goal of mine coming into this year. Secondly, communication has also been a big area of growth for me and a big part of that growth has just been being around people in the industry more. I don't really have much research experience outside of this, so learning how people talk and think about the science they are doing is really eye opening and helped me to be able to better communicate what I am doing to others. Both of these skills have contributed to the larger aspect of growing as a professional in the work place. Being able to be trusted to accomplish tasks on my own and being able to communicate my findings in an effective way to people who know way more about this topic than me were big strides in learning how to be a professional.

The Workplace

As I have been around my coworkers for a while now, I have picked up on various behaviors and attitudes that I would like to emulate in the future. First and foremost though, they are all helpful and willing to hear out any problem that I am having no matter how small it is. I am very much a perfectionist, which means that knowing I did every detail correct is important to me. This means that I ask questions about seemingly unimportant aspects of our work, but I have met very little resistance to my questioning. Although the things I ask about may not be relevant to my work now, it could be in the future which means everyone is always willing to help me out. This sort of willingness to help others in the workplace is something I would like to grow in and make sure I carry into my professional life in the future. To never have to say "Oh, you don't really need to know that, it's not that important." It just makes it feel much more welcoming to know that everyone will try to help me out when I have an issue. Hopefully, I become experienced enough in this work to help somebody else some day.

When I first started this internship I was very much expecting it to be something I did on the side of doing school work. I thought It was going to be something I did every so often to get work experience and learn a little about what doing research is really like. I was quite surprised when I really started to care about the work I was doing. I was starting to look forward to going to the lab and helping out in any way I could. It started to become less of something I just did, and more of something that I wanted to do. A lot of that comes down to the great people that I work with, and their expertise in guiding me through a largely unfamiliar topic has been a key reason I love coming back.

A lot of my internship has involved doing things that I didn't expect to do, but nothing has been too surprising about my day-to-day activities. I honestly never thought I was going to interact with the rats that we were using for the study, but I actually do get to see them sometimes. I also didn't think I was going be able to actually see and work with the bones that I analyze. I expected that I was only going to be able to see them in microscope slides or maybe when they are embedded in their plastic cubes, but I actually get to work with a lot more steps in the processes. This experience has been a great opportunity to learn from and interact with people from the scientific community. Seeing how real people in the field are conducting studies and thinking of novels ways to push science forward has been really eye opening and it is something that I hope to emulate in the future. One thing that I wasn't expecting to find so valuable was hearing about the stories of how some of my coworkers got to where they are today. For some reason, I just assumed that they took a very straightforward path and everybody ended up here in a similar way, but I couldn't have been more wrong. There are far more options available to me at this point in my career that I didn't even know about and most likely wouldn't have known about had some of my coworkers not done them themselves. Realizing that there isn't just one way to proceed was very enlightening and gave me confidence that even if I don't exactly know what I want to do right now, there are ways to help me find out and get me where I want to go.

I would describe the workplace culture as very welcoming. I could tell from the first day that everybody around the lab was willing to help each other and that this wasn't just a place for putting your head down and working (though, you still have to do that sometimes). I honestly couldn't have lucked out more with the workplace that I was given, it is quite a relaxed environment where I get to have great conversations about the science that we are doing, while also being trusted to work alone and problem solve anything that comes up. As far as my ideal workplace goes, I honestly don't have much other reference than this internship. Most of my past jobs have been various food and service occupations, all of which I enjoyed less than what I am doing now. So to say that this already is my perfect work environment may be a bit of a stretch, but I do like the work that I am doing it and I like the place that I am doing it very much. My whole attitude towards science and research has changed drastically by working in this lab. I came into this internship not really knowing what I wanted to do, but as I talked with the people around my lab and learned more about their journey's through science and how they ended up here and actually getting to do real work that has a real impact really opened my eyes and how I learned that this is what I want to do. I have grown tremendously as a result of this and I can't really thank my coworkers in my lab enough. I know that I haven't been doing this for very long, and that there is still a lot for me to learn, but I think I have a great start and I at least have a great idea of what real research is going to be like.

Successes and Challenges

I have had many successes in my time here as well as many challenges. The success that I am most proud of though is the pride that my supervisors take in me. During the first semester of doing this internship we had a meeting with the head of the LHSI program, Brandi, and during the meeting I could tell that both Dr. Allen and Dr. Metzger were proud to have me in their lab. They trusted me enough to let me perform a lot of tasks on my own and hearing them talk about how well I am doing on the project they gave me is success enough for me. As far as challenges go, most of them stem from not being as used to the very technical side of the job. There are a lot of machines and programs and programs that are connected to machines that we use to analyze the bones and when something is goes wrong or is different from the initial way I learned to do something, I typically am unable to fix it myself. Luckily, Dr. Metzger has always been there to help me out when something goes wrong, so any challenges I have had on the technical side have been largely negated by her experience with working in this field for longer than I have.

My biggest success from a goal perspective has to be that I am I working on a project essentially by myself, which I already touched on a bit. I came into this internship not really knowing what to expect, so I thought that I was going to be very unprepared and not fit with my workplace at all. This obviously wasn't the case and I was taught everything I needed to know very quickly and since I ended up liking it more than I thought I would, I made sure that everything I was doing was correct and I was doing the best job I could. I got so good in fact, that I was left to complete a lot of the work on my own, which was one of my original goals before I even started the internship. I really wanted to gain their trust enough to let me do things on my own, and honestly it happened a lot sooner than I expected. A unexpected challenge that has recently altered my ability to work has been my recent surgery. Just as I was getting close to finishing the main bulk of my project, I developed appendicitis and was out for pretty much an entire week. I could barely move for the first few days so I obviously couldn't come in and work so I had to make sure everybody involved knew as well as do my best to stay up to date for school. It was a rough and stressful time, but I think that I contacted everybody I needed to and am almost fully back up to date. These kinds of things happen though, so being prepared to take measures to fix everything is important. Also, everybody involved was very accepting and helpful as they understood roughly what I was going through. I learned that being prepared for the worst is always going to be better than not being prepared at all and I will continue that mentality as my career becomes more demanding of my time.