The past year, when I started my junior year, I had asked my research mentor if I could take a step back from the lab as I focused on school a little more as my coruseload was filled with upper-level biochemistry and physiology classes that required a lot more time dedicated to studying and becoming proficient with the material. My mentor, Dr. Goh, agreed that it would be beneficial to focus more on school, but still encouraged me to continue doing imaging and analyses work, which can be performed at my own pace. The summer before, as I continued working as a PCA and gaining more clinical experience, I focused more on completing analyses and the data acquisition of the wet lab experiments that were performed by the other students in the lab. As I continued gathering my own data, my mentor encouraged me to attend the lab meeting with the other summer research students, and present my own summer work which I had continued doing while I worked in the hospital. During the lab meeting, as I shared my own data, and listened to presentations by the other students, I realized how I missed being in the lab and actively contributing to the different projects. As I left the meeting once it was completed, I knew I wanted to start taking on a more active role in the research work again, and I was motivated to do a SURF experience again for the next summer so that I can dedicate an entire summer to research without having to juggle classes and extracirriculars.
As I began working in the summer, I was very motivated to finish up my data collection and sat down with my mentor to discuss my goals for the summer. I knew I wanted to practice on being more assertive in my own work and take on a more active role in driving the progress of my experiments and the data collection. I also wanted to become better at time management, which I felt I had previously not struggled with in the past. However, the past year was extremely busy, especially as I had to dedicate more time with studying, which caused me to miss some deadlines or do some things last minute. Especially, as I looked back at myself during my first two years in college, as someone who was very proficient with organization and time management, I feel that I needed to learn to be that person again. As I reflected on these soft skills, I incorporated them into my goals for the summer.
Througout my summer research experience, I came back to these goals, as I esatablished a routine for myself and became a driver of my experiments and felt more confident in expressing my opinions as I showed my data collection and results to my mentor and PI. I became more proficient in the wet lab techniques and felt more comfortable managing multiple tasks and projects in the lab.
One of my most memorable accomplishments of this summer was starting and finishing a first draft of a manuscript to wrap up my current project that I've been working on for almost three years now. This was an entirely new and unique process, especially as I've never written a manuscript before. However, when my mentor asked me if I wanted to take part in the writing process, I didn't hesitate in accepting, and was grateful to have the opportunity to expand my writing skills and develop my own style. I also came to quickly realize that scientific writing process was something that I actually enjoyed very much, mainly as this was a project that I've had an active role in since the beginning and I wanted to play an active role in writing about it as the first author. As I finished the first draft, with the help of another student in the lab, I was very proud of the progress that I've made so far, and the paper represented the culmination of my work in this project.
As the summer came to an end, I was very grateful to have been able to participate in SURF again, especially being able to work with other student who were in the lab with me, as well as contuing to build a connection with my mentor and PI. Looking back at the work I've put in, I'm very satisfied with the progress that I was able to make, and the decision to dedicate my summer to research. Looking forward now, I feel that I have a strong basis for my senior capstone, which I will pursue through the research route, as I start on a new project that will allow me to expand on the research work I've been doing.