My STEP experience in undergraduate research this summer was a great experience for me. It taught me a lot of things not just about lab techniques but about the direction I want to take my life. One of my goals this summer was to find out if I wanted to go to grad school and become a researcher or if I wanted to do something else. I found out that while I like doing research, I don't think I want to do it as a career. I don't like the fact that I don't get a lot of personal interaction with other people outside of my lab. I think I would prefer becoming a doctor or something like that where I have a lot of personal interactions.
As for my research, hopefully our paper will get published sometime soon. In addition, we are going to try to identify the protein that sits on DNA at the promoter region. We're not sure how difficult this is going to be but we're going to give it a shot. If we can do it and characterize the protein, it'll be a major paper that would likely get published in a major journal, which would be a big deal for my professional career, even if I don't go into the research field. But that's a long way down the road from now.
Overall, my experience has been a great one. I would like to thank STEP for giving me the opportunity to work full time this summer in a research lab so that I could learn all of the things that I did. It was a summer where I learned a lot about myself and what I want to do with my life, which is a great thing for a third year undergrad. Hopefully, I'll continue to learn many things in the lab and about myself so that I can accomplish all of my academic and personal goals.
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment