When I first found out that I got accepted into the Howard Hughes Research Fellows Program it was unfortunate (for the people around me) because I was in the middle of The Ms. Black and Gold Pageant and I was squirming in my seat and yelling while cupping my hands around my mouth as to not make too much noise. At some point in my life, I decided that I wanted to do research for a living, but the problem was that I had never done research before. Basically, I saw HHRF as a way to help me determine whether or not research would be the right career for me (and making $4,300 in the process doesn’t hurt).
So I got in yada yada and then we get to my first day. I guess I have always had this sort of fantastical idea about research that everyone is going to be in the lab in white coats mixing chemicals and yelling out “eureka!” but it wasn’t like that. I arrived at Dr. Amy Schmid’s lab and saw the benches and adjunct to that: an office. I saw who would be in the lab with me as they read articles and input data into spreadsheets. Of course they would also do things in the lab, but I never really thought about the behind-the-scenes work until Howard Hughes. My first two days were just reading and trying to familiarize myself with Halobacterium salinarum which is the name of the archaeon I would be working with. I also had to learn about safety procedures and what to do in case of fires/ what types of extinguishers are used for what types of fires and get certifications for each by taking online tests.
Only a week of HHRF has gone by and before I have even begun what I thought was “research” I have learned a lot. Reading scientific articles, taking detailed notes, attending lab meetings, making media, making plates, learning what an autoclave is, washing dishes and lab maintenance are all part of research and so is taking the occasional lunch with people in your lab and learning about each other. That is what I expect to get out of this summer research program. It is my hope that through HHRF and Dr. Schmid’s lab, I can get a firsthand feel for what the life of a researcher is like in the grand scheme of things and although I don’t think that I can come to a definitive “yes” or “no” as to whether or not I want to do research at the close of this program, it will definitely be a solid first step in some direction.
If you want to learn more about these cool little halophiles, you can click on this article that was sent to me by my awesome labmate Keely Dulmage.
