Experiences

My freshman year of my undergraduate program, I had the opportunity to work in a prep lab in the Biology Department at IUPUI. I worked in this lab with several other freshman, three upperclassmen, and our lab supervisor. We worked together to prep for various upper level biology courses such as genetics, cell biology, immunology, and microbiology. I learned many new techniques as well as became more proficient at ones I already knew. Skills such as pipetting, making solutions, performing dilutions, running an autoclave, and preparing agar media were done on almost a daily basis. Everyone in the lab learned a lot about how to work as a team because we had weekly deadlines and had to work together to meet them. In order to accomplish this, it was important we had strong communication amongst one another. Therefore, I became proficient in how to work together and communicate as a team during my time working in that prep lab.

I was in a situation recently at my internship that required good professionalism. I was preparing for my upcoming experiment, but I had an organic chemistry exam that evening that I needed to prepare for. Both tasks were very important to me. I had a lot of preparation to do before my experiment, and just when I thought I had finished with everything, my site manager thought of more things I needed to do. I was very frustrated at this point, but instead of becoming impatient, I took a deep breath and finished the remaining tasks in a timely manner. I used a growing sense of patience, meticulousness, and time management to complete this task. As it turned out, I still had time to finish my internship duties and have time to finish studying for organic chemistry. This was a big moment of growth in my professionalism and gave me a sense that as long as I stayed focused and grounded I could balance different things in my life and be successful.