It’s hard to believe that I’ll be finishing the program and leaving Durham this weekend—partly because eight weeks flew by so quickly, but partly because my work in the Tung lab is nowhere near finished. I set out to study one scientific question this summer, but it seemed like every time I learned something, it led to ten more questions. I’m so excited to keep exploring this project, and all of the new questions that it prompts, as an Independent Study student in the Tung lab this fall.
I’m very grateful that the Howard Hughes program funded my project in the lab this summer, and I spent the bulk of my time working in the lab, but I feel especially lucky to have had additional opportunities through the program that helped me learn about scientific careers. When I came to Duke, I was already pretty sure that I was more interested in pure science than in medicine, but it seemed like everyone around me wanted to be a doctor. I probably knew more about how to be pre-med than how to be pre-grad-school, simply because that’s what everyone was talking about. So it was incredibly helpful to meet members of the academic community, both in my lab and in the HHRF programming, and hear about their career trajectories. My most important takeaway was that careers in science are not just limited to academia and medicine. I still hope to attend graduate school after my time at Duke, because there’s no way I’ll be done learning after four years, but I have no idea what will happen after that. And that’s okay.
Becoming involved with research has been an extremely valuable experience, and I would recommend it to all scientifically minded students, even those who have no intention of pursuing a career in academia. Going from the classroom, which focuses on everything that has already been figured out, to the uncertainties and new discoveries of the lab, is a reminder that scientific knowledge is continuously growing and changing. It’s also a reminder of how much human creativity, dedication, failure, and success went into creating the knowledge for each and every sentence of my textbooks. And finally, being taken away from my peers and the school curriculum, and put into a lab with people who are years ahead of me, is a humbling reminder of how much I still have yet to learn.
