Learning & Skills

Learning

My internship experience has been invaluable in my academic and career goals by allowing me to gain experience in the area that I admire the most: research in mental and neurological disorders. It has allowed me to improve my communication skills and aid in my ability to network with neuroscience professionals. It has also given me the opportunity to be apart of a team of people who have similar interests and goals in mind. Although my part in Dr. Walker's research was small, we were able to tentatively prove our hypotheses which was a step in the right direction and allowed a certain narrowing down of what did and did not work. It also had the opposite effect of broadening our perspectives which led to implications for other ideas and approaches.

My Skills

The skills and strengths I have include

  • Active listening

  • Cooperation

  • Scientific/Report Writing

  • Perseverance

  • Problem-solving

  • Organizational skills

  • Ability to Follow Directions

  • Strong Written Communication

Skills and strengths I have developed include communicating the objectives and results behind the research I am doing and increasing my independence in the lab. I have also learned more about how to use statistical analysis to visualize the results of an experiment, how to pipet accurately, how to perform Western blot and cell culture techniques, and a little bit about how to maintain mouse colonies. Lastly, I have learned how to more effectively write reports as well as edit my ePortfolio/resume.

Connecting what I have learned so far in my courses to the work I did in my internship, I learned a few different cell culture procedures which I can mainly connect to my Cell Biology lecture and laboratory courses and somewhat to my Organic Chemistry I and II laboratory courses. I learned about an important protein in Dr. Walker's research called "Akt," and soon after, I learned about it in my Cell Biology course. Working in the lab for my internship also strengthened my diligence in my Organic Chemistry laboratory courses, and vice versa. Both internship and lab courses have taught me how to record experiments thoroughly and interpret results effectively.

Some skills I used include communication, cooperation, independence, and problem-solving. I am much more confident in the communication area compared to where I was since at the beginning of the internship where I was a little reluctant to converse much with the members of the lab. Now, however, I feel like I established a good relationship with everyone I worked with. I also worked on my independence in the lab and was able to make a plan for the week and know exactly what I was doing and what I needed without frequent questions to others.

In order to grow these skills, I continued to ask questions about the big picture of the research being done as well as achieved a good idea of the routine that goes on each week so that I could get comfortable with it and know where I stood pertaining to duties. I still definitely need to grow when it comes to communication, so in order to improve that skill, I could talk to more people as well as do some kind of communication development course/activity.

I have used communication, listening, time management, and organizational skills this year and would like to continue working on my communication skills, mainly because they have been the hardest for me to develop. Actions I will need to take in this role include increasing my independence and actively adding new and unique perspectives to situations through critical thinking. After LHSI, I will seek out positions that challenge my communication skills as well as demonstrate my time management and planning skills.

This experience allowed me to build upon my strengths and skills like scientific/report writing, problem-solving, and ability to follow directions using active listening. I kept a scientific journal that documented my experiments, and I learned how to properly and accurately record them so that every relevant detail would be included. I also was met with a few problems with the Western blot and cell culture procedures I did that I had to find ways to correct so that I did not ruin an experiment. Lastly, I built upon my ability to follow directions by using active listening; this became much easier when the details of my project made more sense so I was able to follow along better.