This experience has made me realize that I do enjoy working in a lab, the work that I have done for Dr. D’Anna has helped me understand the importance of lab work and research. I’m not sure I will continue in working in labs that are Psychology based or if something different, I did however enjoy the neurological part of studies. While working there I talked to other students who worked on the lab, they all gave me some advice on college and lab work. What I learned that made a big impact on my understanding of lab work was the way Dr. D’Anna actively works with her students by assigning lab students to read articles and do research, then once a week there's a lab meeting to discuss these articles to better understand them. This is something I liked because it’s a great strategy to have all lab students have the same understanding on other studies. I am glad that I took this opportunity because I know that while in college I want to work in labs. I feel that Internship given me a great opportunity and advantage for my future.
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Part 1:
The work I’ve done as intern will be valuable to my education after high school because I’ve gotten to understand what it takes to take part in experiments. I’ve learned a few things about many things. For instance, my very first project from week 1 was working on Dr. D'annas page on the CSUSM website. For editing this website I needed to learn how to use a new kind of website builder than the ones I use ex. (Weebly and Wordpress), these skills will be helpful when working with building websites. Something else I’ve worked on was creating an online scoring sheet for videos to create this sheets I needed to learn how to use formulas in spreadsheets, this is something that’ll be helpful for when gathering data. Having the opportunity to work in an active research lab I’ve gotten to understand the structure of how labs work. I understand now that when beginning to work at a lab CITI training for regulations and procedures needs to be completed. Then lab training that the PA of the lab creates, which is typically shorter and easier to go through. After completing that work, I was able to start working on another kind of training for my internship project. Something I learned from working in this lab is that I have to manage my work properly. When working in the lab it was ultimately up to me to manage what I wanted to work on. What I noticed in the lab was that there are certain times when not everyone has something to do, so some students help each other and divide work. I find that as something really helpful because being offered help when you have a lot to do is nice and a good environment. Working at this lab has shown me that this is something I would like to continue to do in college. I’m not sure if I would like to continue being in a lab that works with animals but I do enjoy learning about relating to the neurological field. That’ll be something I look more into later on. Part 2: I needed to communicate with people who had to have their information updated on the page and to all the people I reached out to, they were very nice and welcomed me to the lab. Something that I noticed in people at the lab was that they were all very friendly, not only do they go to the lab and get their work done but they communicate with one another and help each other. When I needed help figuring things out another student at the lab, Conner helped me. He has been my go to person for a lot of things while being in the lab. Everyone there is more than willing to help each other and it’s such a warm environment there. I’m glad I have felt welcomed and not too intimidated by others. These are qualities I would like to see in myself because I know being friendly and nice when working in a lab environment are important because it makes people want to work with you. Other qualities I see in students are doing more than what is asked, we have weekly meetings with the labs PA, my mentor and students usually have weekly assignments and discuss in the meetings. Whenever new things are worked on, students present their findings and then have a group discussion about them so everyone understands any leads there could possibly be. During these meetings, I see students interested in what others have to say. In the last 2 weeks of internship, I feel like I have advocated for myself. I don’t think I have been in any awkward or uncomfortable situations where I didn’t feel happy about the work I was doing. Everything my mentor and students at the lab have asked me to do, I feel challenged enough to take on the work but never feel alone or as if I couldn’t ask questions. The students at the lab all take on what they know they can do, everyone is part of a different project and come in to work on their stuff when they get the chance. The most I’ve needed to speak out about is talking to another student who asked me to do something but saying I was busy and telling them I could do it later in the day. During the first week of internship, I received a couple of assignments. One being working on the CSUSM website. At first it was difficult because the only website I have ever really known was weebly. The setup was different and I needed help, so I asked Conner for help and he guided through a couple things. I’m glad to feel comfortable with people in the lab because I don’t get shy or embarrassed to ask questions.
I have been trying to follow the memorable intern advice, and I think so far I’ve done an okay job. I don’t necessarily have to prove myself all the time because I spend most of my time working alone. The way I have tried to be helpful to others is by offering if they need anything for me to do when I find a spare moment in the day. I am also currently trying to make an online scoring sheet that includes formulas so that the lab can use for multiple experiments. A previous intern made an online scoring sheet but it was just designed for the project he was working on at the time. My hope is to make this scoring sheet so that it can be used in multiple experiments later on. I also want to start communicating more with students at the lab, this week I’ve begun to work with one person rather than branching off and helping others. I want to communicate more with Grace because she has a different schedule than I do, she comes in around 12 and I’m here around 9, then by the time we really get working on things I have to leave because my day ends around 3. It’s also become very easy to lose track of time since you spend the entire day in a lab doing work, you don’t remember to eat or that its lunch time. It’s kinda nice, typically we all take a break together and go down to the coffee shop. For my internship projects, I didn’t have to create something on my own. On my first day of internship my mentor already had ideas of what I could do for the lab, which I agreed to take part in. In the last week I finished working on 2 of them, the simpler project I did was editing an operational definitions handbook for new students coming to work at the lab. This handbook includes an index of definitions and pictures with captions to explain the definitions. Another project I began to work on was editing my mentors page on the CSUSM website because the school year ended many of the graduate students were leaving and being replaced by new students so I had to add their profiles. A couple other things I’ve done for the site are updating pictures and writing information on previous students who worked in the lab. The last project I think I’ll be working on is scoring videos for one of the previous projects that students worked on. By scoring I mean, going back to a previous experiment, looking over the videos and recording the actions that occured in the video. Students working at the lab had already written down the actions, but my job is to make a spreadsheet with formulas to add all of the seconds and actions in, for long term recording. A previous intern made something like this for the lab, but I am unable to use this one because the actions (definitions) are different from the previous experiment.
The skills I need to have in order to have a great project are computer skills. Before my internship I knew how to use the basics of spreadsheets and now I have to create a formula for it, which seems very difficult for me right now but I know I can find some sort of beginners guide online to help me out. Computer skills are also important because I need them to work on the website page. Another skill I need is communication, this is important because in order to update the website I have to reach out to students and ask them for Bios and pictures for the sites. I also communicate with my mentor via email, most of the time because I don’t spend time with her. We typically have daily check ins, and when signing off on my hours, we meet at the end of the week. The support I need from people in the lab are to help explain what info to use and how to create something for them that will be useful. Usually at the lab, Conner is there who always offers to help me. When it came to the website and the handbook I didn’t exactly need help, just for him to review and make sure the work was well done. Now starting this project, I feel like I need help finding a setup that will work for the lab. Another person who is helping me is Alex, she is also scoring videos by going over them and counting seconds to make sure what previous students did was accurate. So far we have found mistakes in the work and have needed to recount multiple parts of each testing, how scoring works is by counting each testing for each rat, this being that there are about 100 testings I have to go over. During my interview with my mentor she said she chose to work at CSUSM because she had always wanted to work with underrepresented students and the diversity within the school is what she was looking for her. Average research schools aren’t very community based and are often not very diverse. After she received her phD she did more community work. She also went through training for human work and decided not to follow through with more human work because of the lack of relevance there was from her major. Another reason she didn’t follow through with post doc work is because of the fact that applying for grants while working at an institution is just spare money on the side of what the institution gives you. She also stated that she enjoyed her job because it’s very flexible, she has 3 kids. She enjoys how there aren’t any concrete rules and doesn’t seem like she’s living in the world of work. Something she didn’t realize would be as hard as it has been was having a child, she had a kid when she was a Junior in College and from there she still went to graduate school. It also has been hard to balance work and being a mother. She also didn’t realize the sacrifices she would have to make. As for getting along with people in her career, she finds it to be fairly easy because of the fact she can choose who she wants to work with, like for instance she can pick committees she’s on and the research partners she has, if any. Her advice was to be nice to administration because they’re the ones who do a lot for everyone and will either help you in a situation or not. Here at CSUSM, she not only has 2 research labs but also teaches classes every semester and takes part of University services. Every semester she can pick out the amount of classes she teacher, typically it’s 3 for everyone but since she’s doing well in research she only taught 1 class. Taking part of University services can mean many things such as scribing meetings, being part of college level committees, budget committee, etc. As for research she does all of the main work for grant writing, making experiments, working on data analysis and many more things that involve communicating with students. When I asked about the importance of personality traits and skills she said you have to take initiative and get things done. You get to pick your time to work but it’s ultimately up to you to decide what to do with it. The only real deadlines are turning in grades. You also need self motivation and have to want to seek knowledge. Being creative and a good writer are both helpful skills because it’s needed for when writing grants also for being a scientist. Writing papers is all you do as a researcher.
Bonus Question: Dr. D’anna said I forgot to ask about personal life and the balancing of work. In this job she said that there will always be more that you can do. She takes part in Summer programs and having both labs. With personal life, it’s hard to balance both because if you don’t watch yourself you can burn out. She mentioned how she always brings work home and it’s a complete norm to her because its always been like that. She doesn’t get a chance to spend time with her kids when she’s writing grants because of how time consuming it is. Her ending response is that you have to keep sanity, and try to make time for your personal life. Internship Reflection: Part 2 One of the biggest questions I have for my mentor that I have not asked yet is how does she approach a new study. There are students in the lab who are kind of working on their own stuff and their own studies. But what I want to know is how she decides when she will begin a new study? It may be based off of how much credit her previous work gets or maybe she starts a new study based off of a previous one. I understand that starting something is difficult because of all the work that is needed to be done but also if students approach her with idea for something new: does this one student just present the idea or do a group of students come together to form a new study? A huge connection that I’ve made between my internship and the work I’ve done at school is the project I recently worked on in Bio known as “the paper” the paper being a written scientific paper on the testings we did this semester on ants. The format that we used to write this paper is the same format anyone who is doing professional research uses that being, they all need to have an abstract, introduction, background, methods, results, discussion and conclusions. In the lab hallway there are giant posters for each study that my mentor and her team have completed which are all summary posters of the work they did. Something that I find really cool at the moment is how this week is finals week! Which means literally every single student is freaking out about tests and essays. It’s a little scary but really cool to see them relax after they take a test. Sometimes after they take their finals, they kinda just leave or go home because they don’t have anything else to do. This is another one of the reasons this week has been more laid back from usual (well as I have been told). Also in the lab I have been introduced as the “new intern” and not as the “new high school intern” and sometimes when other students ask me questions and find out I’m the high school intern they get a little shocked. After that there’s always a large “OOOOOH” and a very odd toned ‘cool’ at the end. To get to internship I drive 45 minutes from Fallbrook to the CSUSM campus. I do the drive anyway from home to HTHNC while going to school and in a way CSUSM cuts my drive back by 5 minutes or so, there isn’t a real difference. I’m glad the commute is practically the same. I would not be a big fan if I had to drive elsewhere like to San Diego every day. For this internship the skills I need the most right now are being an efficient researcher, since I’m new to the lab, I’ve never taken any classes that have anything to do with the lab work. I was given a numerous amount of articles to read, which is much easier than having to go out and find them on my own. I’ve also done the CITI program which is all the training for the lab, I did it in kind of a time crunch because it was basically needed for my first day there but I wasn’t aware that I needed to complete the training. In order to be a good intern you have to pick up on everything to be up to date with everyone and what their doing. I would have to say working there is a lot of on your feet kind of work, therefore I believe the more you learn the easier it gets. Today I arrived at the lab at 9 am, my mentor wasn’t in yet but students were already in the lab working and starting off their day. While waiting there I sat outside the lab and pulled out my computer to begin some work. The area of my workplace is very quiet, people are constantly in and out of the building, everyone has something to do and no one looks bored. But that might just be because it’s finals week. I liked that very much about the building and I also liked the isolation in working in the labs, the students in here are always doing work and when they have other work to do, they’ll come in here to get that other stuff done too.
When I finally got access to go in the lab, there was only one person in there working and his name is Conner, he introduced himself to me and was very polite and outgoing. The lab I am working at is very isolated in this small hallway, the office is divided into areas and little rooms. From those rooms theirs a room that has a microscope for studying the mice then the other room is for doing experiments on the mice with mazes. My mentor Dr. Kimberly D'anna told Connor to walk me through the project I would be working on and he did a great job of explaining things to me. He helped me begin the process of the CITI program and explained to me how to work on it. He also gave me a full tour of the lab, told me about the mice and rats. But most importantly he gave me all the background information I needed to know in order to start working on the projects my mentor asked me to. Something that strikes me about the work im doing is being able to do work that college students are currently working on, these are the kind of studies that students don’t become involved in until later on. I like that I'm able to work hands on with the projects right as I got here, I know that the work I’m doing is more of data collection and a lot of tedious work but I enjoy it because I know this is an important factor to the study. I have to say the part I’m most excited about is learning everything about this specific study of the rats and mice brains and their behavior. I am also excited about being able to work with other students in the lab and get to know them. In just today Conner gave me advice on college and told me about fellowships that I could apply for and most of the things he gave me advice on were based off of his experience. One thing I’m worried about is not succeeding in the work I do for the lab. As in not helping the lab in any way possible or providing them with any work that they could use in the future. My hope is do something that will impact or help them later on when finishing their study. A typical work day at CSUSM is meeting with people and discussing pendent projects. Twice a week there are lectures given by my mentor that are an hour long, afterwards there's office hours. When office hours are over, we go to the lab and check in with Grace (graduate student who’s in charge of the lab). Every other day we have to clean the mices cage.
I think that the labs general policies aren't very strict. Everyone arrives around 8 am to begin a schedule for the day. I think absence is not a good thing in the lab because a lot of the work is very team oriented. There are the kind of jobs that are time consuming and need multiple people to help. I don’t believe that tardiness is a big problem, it’s more about work completion, everyday when interns arrive they already have an idea of what they have to do. The dress code is laid back, one of the interns at the lab wore sweatpants and sneakers. I think the appropriate dress code would be jeans and a blouse. My mentor dressed nicer than the interns at the lab, other students dress business casual. I don’t want to dress too comfortable, to follow HTH dress code at my internship. During internship I expect to attend meetings with other interns and help in the lab. My mentor mentioned that in the lab I will be feeding mice, cleaning after them and helping Grace. I’m not sure what I’ll do in the Human Lab, maybe advertising or data collection. I liked Career Day, because I shadowed my mentor through her class and office hours. |
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