Reflection

Research, as it’s been revealed to me, is beautifully complicated. Unless you’re in the field, practicing and doing the work, you’ll never be able to fully grasp how interdisciplinary it can be. I had a relatively negative perception of research (not the benefits of it – I’m so glad someone loves it and does it) prior to working here, which I was able to break down and really look at upon doing research myself. I saw it as cold and clinical, disconnected from the subject matter, repetitive, boring. However, I came to realize, over the course of several weeks, that research truly both requires and breeds a lot of creativity. I had engaged in forms of research prior, but had never done this sort of wet lab bench research. I worked at NIH when I was 16 years old, and I was in a lab each day, but I was doing more clinical work and shadowing – and I absolutely loved it. Naturally, my favorite day of this internship (now 3 years later) was thus the day I got to shadow clinic in the Neuro-Oncology Branch. I mentioned this briefly in my weekly log, but I took such a meaningful experience away from that shadowing – enough so that it sent me to the bathroom on the South wing of the NIH Clinical Center to cry bittersweet tears, for a few moments. I normally do not lose my composure in that way, but a particular experience moved me to that point, and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to shadow that day. Put simply, I had just watched two remarkably kind, intelligent, and well-respected physicians deliver a woman chilling news: they believed her brain cancer may have come back. Words began to fly about – caught it early, as soon as possible, easy – and a bittersweet tenacity pervaded the room through the cracks. After watching the family grapple with the news, and after I had left the clinic, I ran into the family three times on our way out of the labyrinth-like NIH Clinical Center. The father made a joke that I “was following them”, and we all laughed, sharing a serendipitous moment. Within an hour of knowing these people, I felt invested in their situation, and wanted to see them doing well. These were human beings, with a full life outside of this labyrinth, who never asked for cancer to invade their family. I spent a lot of time ruminating over the shift in both physicians’ bedside manner, and will definitely take what I learned into the real world, and continue to apply it in my pursuit of excellent care and medicine. This experience, paired with the daily frustrations and small victories inherent in research, truly rounded out my time in the NOB-TRIP and made it fully worthwhile. Research is hard, and I will be the first person to admit that – I am not ashamed. However, it is almost always worth the struggle, the waiting time, and the failures. The breakthroughs that can be made in lab could end up affecting people like that family – and that, for me, makes it all worth it. I do get frustrated and restless upon doing repetitive tasks, but I did find that my research was something slightly different each day (as shown in my log). Keeping the big picture in mind, and realizing who this research is actually affecting, keeps people like my mentor (who comes to lab overtime every day, usually including weekends) going. The methodical, applied, repetitive nature of research may seem cold and clinical at first, but appearances are truly never as they seem.