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| Shaking hands with the model in the demo room of the life lab at imec. |
Before this internship I had never worked on a project that
had such a short time frame. It’s made me appreciate why, for example, PhD’s
are so long. Because the purpose of science and engineering is to “boldly go
where no man has gone before,” you often run into unforeseen roadblocks and spend
a lot of time merely optimizing your experiment to get significant, usable
data. It’s something that’s both frustrating because it can take a while to
advance in your findings, but exciting because you’re solving new problems
every day. These three months have flashed by in the blink of an eye and though
I’m happy with my work, I wish I had more time to thoroughly investigate and
optimize my work. After many setbacks including chip clogging and various
issues with the stability of the bacterial lysate, I’m currently analyzing the
data from my last set of experiments on the effect of different chip coatings
on bacterial DNA extraction. I’m excited to do some more research into the
chemical properties of the coatings to help explain my results. This is the
best part of doing science and what makes the tedium of running experiments
worth it.
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| My childhood friends and me at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. |
Though I am grateful for so much of this entire internship
opportunity abroad, one of the most important things that made my experience both
fulfilling and relaxed was the fantastic guidance of my mentor Rodrigo. He gave
me the freedom to think and work independently but would check up on me every
day so I could bring up any questions or concerns I had. It was the perfect
amount of supervision for an intern, in my opinion, as I never felt lost nor
stifled. Of course, I understand that as I become a professional working adult
I will have (and will want) less and less supervision, but I felt like this was
a good transition step on my way to that. I have learned so much about
independent work here that I know I will carry with me for the rest of my
career.
Traveling abroad in countries where I don’t speak the
language has also done wonders for my growth into a functional, independent
adult. Last weekend, I went to Paris again to visit two of my friends from
Seattle. This time, I was traveling alone. Being alone in a foreign country is
both an isolating and uniquely exhilarating experience because you don’t have
anyone you can easily communicate with to lean on. At one point, I held a short
conversation in French with a stranger and it was the most exciting moment of
the whole trip.
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