During the next eight weeks, I am excited to expand my research experience, that I started last semester, in Dr. Boyce’s lab with my mentor and friend, Brittany. In the coming weeks, I hope to learn and grow as a person, a member of the Duke community, and a member of the scientific community.
Firstly, I would like to learn to make mistakes. From my research experience so far, I learned that people make mistakes, and there is a lot of failures. However, I am still hesitant and afraid to make mistakes. It is my primary goal to get outside of my comfort zone, to try new things, to make mistakes, and to learn from those mistakes. To add to this goal, I want to learn that it is okay to “fail” and that failing is a part of the process.
Secondly, I would like to learn to be patient. Science sometimes can be a slow and tedious process. Sometimes you don’t get what you expect and have to follow up on them. Sometimes you have just enough downtime so that you can not do anything else other than wait. The scientific process relies on delayed gratification. However, I enjoy immediate gratification, therefore I procrastinate ( More on instant gratification and procrastination check out this Ted Talk by Tim Urban), thus, I hope that this opportunity will allow me to practice patience, and appreciate things when they come into fruition.
Finally, I hope to be able to communicate and learn from the community around me. Through this program, I am fortunate to be able to spend the summer with my peers from BSURF, BioCoRE, and Huang Fellows. Each individual is taking part in a diverse set of academic research. As a program, we will have the opportunity to share our research, thus helping with our communication skills, and listen to their research, thus expanding our scientific knowledge.
I am excited to see what this summer will bring and as the summer progresses, I will keep an open mind to learn and grow as much as possible.
That’s it until next week, where I will reveal some exciting details on my summer project.
Western blots are cool.
(Photo was originally posted on the Boyce Lab’s website, check it out!)
