My time as a part of the Brackenridge Summer Fellowship was an excellent opportunity that I will treasure throughout my career. My understanding of my own research increased exponentially over these past few months, especially because of the chance I had to learn from my peers who were all participating in research across various disciplines. I understood a lot more about different approaches to answering research questions from different fields, and also was able to find out which approaches were best for communicating the results of the research process.
As for my own research process, I was able to practice techniques in the lab that allowed me to not only develop a thorough understanding of my research methods in testing protein binding capabilities in the mouse glioblastoma model, but I also was able to jump in on the projects being conducted around me. I learned how to work with the mouse model hands-on, performing neurosurgery and meuroimaging to contribute to projects at my lab. This gave me a lot of insight into the work being done at the forefront of discovery in my field, which was a very exciting opportunity I’m really grateful I had, and the thing I thought was very valuable about this experience. However, the experience I valued most this summer was the ability to talk to peers my age just as excited about getting started in the research field. We all had such different and unique ideas we bounced off of each other all summer, and learned how to best communicate our work and passion for what we do. Now, I’ll have many friends that I made this summer that I can reach out to, whether it’s to talk about research, school, or just life in general.
Now that this summer is over, I’m looking forward to a great school year with the rest of the Brackenridge cohort. I’ll be going into my sophomore year, continuing to pursue English Literature and Neuroscience on a Pre-Medical Track, and will be continuing my research for the next three years at Pitt. Upon gaining this unique experience as a Brackenridge scholar, I’m actually very interested in pursuing an MD-PhD, and contributing to the field of both medicine and medical science as a physician-scientist. Thank you so much to everyone for a summer to remember, I’m wishing the best of luck in the future to all my fellow 2022 Brackenridge scholars!
My Brackenridge
