Today was my last day in the Fraser lab. I gave a presentation summarizing my project and what I've learned during this past week's lab meeting. I'm also wrapping up a mini-paper to submit to Dr. Fraser by the end of the week.
The summer really flew by and I didn't fee like I got as much done as I would have liked, but that's what happens when you work in a lab for only 11 weeks or so. I learned a lot of things, and not just technique wise (though that was obviously a major component). I learned to navigate the lab and it's various personalities and how to begin working more independently on my projects and research questions.
I also learned that I really like writing papers and putting presentations together, which totally ups my nerd factor. And though I was still nervous at the beginning of my talk (which was totally silly) I felt pretty confident talking about my work, answering questions and being honest about what I didn't know or the weaknesses in certain experiments, etc. I have to give a lot of credit to the training I got at Ithaca, which gave me lots of practice putting together and giving presentations.
I am pretty sure I won't return to this lab for thesis work. I would want a lab with more interaction with the PI, and a lab environment where there is more interaction among the people in the lab. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy my time in the Fraser lab. My primary objective for this rotation was to learn a lot of basic techniques, get a feel for doing research at the next level, and begin acclimating myself to UPenn, and I feel I met all those goals very well.
I'll be looking forward to my next rotation with Una O'Doherty, but I will definitely be coming back to visit the Fraser lab to say hello. All in all, it was a successful summer; I'm really excited for classes to start!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment