Who were you the night before you started your internship? Who are you as you walk off site at the end of your last day? What’s changed? If you could go back in time to talk to the you you were the night before it all started, what would you say to your past self? Would your past self be impressed with / proud of your future self? How come/why not? The night before my internship, I felt extremely insecure. I was worried that I did not know any neuroscience, and I was worried that I would not fit in in the lab. Now, I am a confident young woman who is much better at forming relationships and is much more confident in herself.
This major shift in my mindset changed because I was fully immersed in the culture in the bear lab, and I worked in an environment where people truly trusted and cared about one another. I was able to talk to people who were both different and similar to me, and this gave me more perspective on the world. If I could go back in time and talk to my past self, I would tell her to trust herself. I would tell her that I am strong and smart and outgoing. I am extremely proud of how far I have come, and I am ready to bring this new found self confidence to college and beyond. I can honestly say that I would not have been the same if I did not do CAPS, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunities that the program has granted me.
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Sometimes there is a rather fine line between work and play. How does your industry attempt to play? Is it productive?
The employees here are extremely busy, but they do attempt to make the work environment more fun. Every wall has memes about lab animals or posters about some of the employees, and these brighten up the lab while not distracting from work. Last Wednesday was actually a really fun day! Tkay, one of the PhD students defended his thesis and passed, and the whole lab went to watch and support him. Afterwards, we celebrated and had a nice cake. Although this was not productive, I think that it is really important to celebrate accomplishments and take the time to enjoy the people around you! What are your day to day responsibilities at your job?
While working in the lab, I have a lot of independence. This is because people often split up tasks to be for efficient, and my job is fairly straightforward. Ming showed me a drawer of brain vials in the beginning, and my job was to slice, mount, stain, and image every one of them. In order to keep myself organized and on track, I created my own schedule: Monday: Slice brain tissue and mount. Tuesday: Mount any tissue that I did not get to on Monday and continue slicing and mounting. Wednesday: Stain tissue from Monday, Tuesday, and last week. Continue mounting. Thursday: Lab meeting followed by, you guessed it!, slicing and mounting. Friday: Finish mounting while confocal microscope warms up, and image slides stained on Wednesday. I was in this routine for about 4 weeks, but today I finished slicing the last brain tissue! This means that I will start doing some new stuff, and I can't wait to see what the lab has in store for me! Does your industry take pains to take care of the little things?
Yes. We take every minute detail into account to make sure that our experiments run smoothly and give us the best possible results. Ming and the lab had to negotiate with MIT Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) for weeks before my arrival to approve my being here. Because I am a high schooler (although I am 18 and will be a college student in 6 months), they worried about my being near sharp objects such as razor blades and the Vibratome blade (for slicing brain tissue). They initially required that Ming insert the blade every time I used the machine, but Ming explained to them that I was capable of handling a blade. We had to write an extremely thorough protocol for tissue slicing and there were many back-and-forths with them telling us things that needed to be different, but once every little detail was correct, they approved the protocol. They actually liked our protocol so much that we won an award for it! Is there an endpoint to learning at your job? Do you want there to be?
In the research industry, there is absolutely no end to learning, not will there ever be. The whole point of research, especially in a relatively new field like neuroscience, is that we need to continue to look for knowledge to help humankind understand new things and help people. The employees here are constantly coming up with new experiments so that they can learn more. Personally, I do not want there to be an end to the learning. I did not know anything about neuroscience coming into this internship, and there is still so much that I do not know. Additionally, I feel like we cannot make progress as a society without discovery and learning. What's lunchtime like? Do you eat with employees, or do you eat on your own? Do employees eat together regularly, or must they eat when they can? How does the way lunchtime is treated at your job reflect the job itself?
In the lab, lunchtime is whenever you can squeeze it in. People either eat on their own at their desk or in the break room, I prefer to eat in the break room. The researchers here seem to eat lunch so that they can sustain themselves to continue being in the lab for the rest of the day, so no one makes a big deal out of it. Typically, people are working on their own experiments during the day and lunch revolves around that. Certain procedures can take a few hours and do not allow for breaks, so the researchers eat either before then or afterward. Because I arrive around 11 or 12 every day, I like to work for a few hours and eat a late lunch at 2 or 3 in the afternoon. All of this reflects the dedication of everyone at the lab to their work, and it also demonstrates how research is an atypical job. Research is not a 9 to 5 job, rather it is a start whenever you get here and end whenever the experiments you plan to do that day are over. Researchers truly care about their research, and small things like lunch and the amount of time and effort they put in further this. How does this industry sustain itself economically?
The Bear Lab is full of high-tech equipment, microscopes, chemicals, and all the coffee one could ever need, yet research labs are not money making machines. So how does the lab afford all of the equipment necessary to operate? Labs apply for grants and rely on donations in order to sustain themselves. Companies invest in research like this because research will improve life for and educate future generations! Here is the list of supporters of the Bear Lab. What is the goal of your industry?
Academic research is focused on discovery. While talking to Ming, she informed me that much of what happens in the neuroscience field is just speculation and that the research that she does may not even fully be proved in her lifetime. Also, neuroscience is new field and what we believe is changing every day, furthering the claim that there is so much that we do not know and will not know for centuries. With all of this considered, research is less about glory and acknowledgement and more about empowering the future generation with the knowledge that they can use to better themselves and the world around them. Research is less about creating specific devices or chemicals to solve problems and more about understanding the root of everything and creating theories. Thus, research, and neuroscience research in particular, is more about nobility than reputation. What was your preconceived notion of your industry before working for your company?
Before starting my work in the Bear Lab, I thought that research was this vast world of academics trying to look for answers to life's questions. I believed that research was an agonizing process that never had an end, and I believed that it was extremely difficult and mind-boggling. In addition to this, I believed that research was the field scientists went into who did not want to before doctors. I honestly do not know where these views came from, but what I know now, even just after one week, is that research is intense but captivating and exciting. People love the research they do, and it is so much more than the world makes it out to be. Although my internship has not officially begun, today I ventured out to MIT to meet my new team and sit in on their weekly lab meeting. For the next three months, I will be working under Ming Fong, a post-doctorate working in the lab. She is exploring lazy eye in mice and experimenting with potential cures. To measure how effective the treatment is, she inserts electrodes into their brain to measure the extent to which they react to the inversion of a black and white design. My part in this will be slicing the brains with what they call "the deli slicer," creating slides with the slices, dying them, and ensuring that the electrode actually went where they thought they put it to ensure that the results that they got were in response to a stimuli.
After touring the lab and learning about what Ming does, I sat in on the weekly lab meeting. Here, each member of the team presents their findings (or what they did not find) from the past week (or month, or year). Dustin, a graduate student at MIT, had been working on an experiment for one year and finally has a break though! It was amazing to see how persistence can pay off and the support that the team had for one another. I can already tell that this is a place that fosters teamwork and collaboration, and I cannot wait to get started with my work! |
Industry PromptsEvery week I will be answering a prompt that allows me to further explore my field. This may be an interview, a story from the lab, or something completely different. Check back in next week to read a new entry! Interact!Like, leave comments, and ask questions! Let me know about your own experiences, as we can connect and interact to figure things out together!
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