This summer gave me an overall better idea of what research means to me and to others. Working in the lab everyday made me realize how long experiments and analysis really take and how to be patient when waiting for everything to fall together. It was very interesting to learn about what each of my HSRF colleagues were working on. I especially enjoyed how different people were at different stages of their research, which made me excited for the future directions of my project. Research is still just as complicated as it sounds, if not more so now that I know more details!
I think the weekly meetings for HSRF were incredibly valuable for many reasons. Being able to discuss other research with peers helps to prevent a sort of tunnel vision effect that can be easy to slip into when you’re working on a specific project for an extended period of time. Having peers that shared my frustrations and excitements about research also helped me feel like part of a group and made me realize I’m not alone. Practicing and learning about how to make our research accessible to a wider audience by changing our language was also incredibly valuable, especially since scientific research can easily become flooded with complicated jargon that is difficult for even a scientist to understand. Considering that most of everyone’s research will (hopefully) eventually be applied to human subjects, it’s very important to learn how to talk about research in a way that more people can understand so that more people can care about what you’re doing.
I will be finishing up my academic career at Pitt and graduating in the Spring of 2023. I’m hoping to finish out strong and not let the higher level biology classes get to me! Although my lab will be moving to Boston in the beginning of the fall, I plan to stay with the lab virtually until I finish out my last year of college. A big part of my research was taking lots of images, so I will definitely have a lot to analyze remotely! I also hope that I will help write some of the papers for the different projects I have been a part of with my lab. Ideally, I would like to move to Boston to be a lab tech for my lab and spend my gap year working on further projects while also working with patients and shadowing. Although I still haven’t decided, I do plan on either going to PA school or medical school and specializing in sports medicine or something similar (orthopedics, physical medicine, etc). I believe this fellowship has helped me take my career to the next level and has helped me realize how interesting research can be!
