I felt accomplished when I was first able to run the HPLC machine without any issues or help. This came after a few weeks of being shown how it worked and seeing how others ran the machine and how they made the samples. After learning all of that and being able to make samples based only off of what would be predicted, I ran the sample and was able to get identifiable results that helped with the research.
Challanges
The most challenging part has been understanding some of the talk in the lab, because not everyone is working on the same projects, so it's hard to focus on conversations when everyone is using a different scientific dialect. To overcome this, I have been working and observing two different lab projects and that has allowed me to differentiate what they are talking about and how to connect the works and terms to each other.