Goals
Internship Goals
Practice and ask questions plenty of times before starting on my own
Keep everything sterile under the hood by changing gloves and disinfecting often
Make sure that my personal experiments do not get contaminated
Throughout the duration of my time in Dr. Mendonca’s Lab I have been able to improve my skills when it comes to maintaining a sterile field and in achieve better results in my experiments. This skill will be beneficial in my future career path as a surgeon as keeping a sterile field is of the upmost importance.
Understanding the calculations I need to do for diluting
Understanding the different yields of cells and how to interpret them
Have a deep understanding of the experimental procedure
Recently I was introduced to data entry in my lab. It was interesting to see how the experiments I was performing translated into data that could be interpreted to create or improve treatments for millions of people. I think by far this was the most important skill I gained in my lab experience and I am looking forward to see what improvements are going to come next.
Emailing my supervisor of any changes to my schedule promptly
Working back through my techniques to see what I can improve often
Work with the other intern and ask each other questions
I was intimidated at first when emailing my supervisor and making sure I was professional in my communications. However, with lots of time and practice, I am now very comfortable at communing with not only my supervisor but any other professional emails that I send such as my professors and physicians I email for various shadowing opportunities or guest speaker invitations. Although I continue to improve with every email I send I am fairly confident in my abilities and I am excited to see what new opportunities my skills will open up.
Career Goals
My current academic goal is to get into medical school with my extensive portfolio that I continue to build. My career goal is to hopefully become a cardiothoracic surgeon. I also hope that I can use my skills to benefit people who are less fortunate in my home country of Morocco along with other third world countries. I hope with experiences such as LHSI that I can learn many useful skills that I can carry onto my future goals.
I have been certain in my career goals before I came to college, and I am still certain I want to stick with my career goals. I have joined many organizations that help me gain insight on my future career goal and it has only encouraged me further to pursue my passions. I also do a lot of research and seek out many different people who are in the field and I have become inspired by many physicians and medical students.
My goals have changed now that I have actual experience working in a lab. Although I have really enjoyed my experience at my site thus far, I would love to be more involved in the decision-making part of the experiment. Such as sitting in on team meetings to discuss the progress we are making. I am certain that those types of experiences will fundamentally increase my understanding of the research I am contributing to. I also believe that it would be able to improve my skills of responsibility and it would elevate my experience. By achieving these goals I will gain new understanding that would further qualify me in my pursuit of being a physician.
Although my future career path will require me to put in lots of hard work and dedication I am able to start with smaller goals in order to help me become a strong applicant for medical school. This month I will focus on getting a solid start on all my courses so that I have a strong foundation for the rest of the semester. I will then use this to maintain straight A’s for the spring semester. Looking to the upcoming year I will use knowledge from all my courses and experiences to create a productive study plan for my MCAT.