Looking back and reflecting on my summer, I am grateful to have been accepted into the Howard Hughes Research Fellows program as well as happy to have accepted and participated in it. I would like to thank Dr. Grunwald, KP and Paul (or Dr. Durst; I still don’t know what to call him) for making it run so smoothly even though us undergrads can be real nuisances to deal with and make things tough. I’d also like to thank everybody in the Schmid lab, primarily Dr. Schmid, Horia and Adrianne for teaching me everything I know about research.
With all of that being said, I still don’t know whether or not research is for me. HHRF did for me what it was supposed to do: give me a better idea of what life is like in the lab. As stupid as I’m about to sound, I never even thought about labs having offices. I learned that you don’t always wear a labcoat, you do sit at a desk sometimes, and things take time to grow and show results. Science takes patience. What I have concluded is that I will definitely do whatever I can within my power to try to get more research experience. Hopefully I can get experience in many diverse areas and find out whether or not research is for me and what type of research is for me, if any at all. As far as my ideas about science go, it has definitely elevated my interest although I was always interested in it. Working with my secondary mentor, I really grew to admire his wit and way around problems. I felt that every wall I saw was just a speed bump for him and what would stump me, he could navigate around in a matter of seconds. I want to learn more about science and scientific methods so that I can get to that point in which I just know what to do most of the time. I’ve got a long ways to go.
