I’ve never been one to think particularly far ahead into the future—the idea that I don’t know who or where I am going to be in a couple years terrifies me. That’s why I’ve often avoided thinking too much about the details of graduate school, namely where I want to go or what I want to study. I’ve focused more on what I do know for sure—that I want my future career to be centered around biological research, and to do research at a higher level I need to go to graduate school. To that end I’ve tried to center my college experience around widening my horizons and learning about all the possibilities and applications that the world of bioengineering has to offer in hopes of finally finding a subject that I’m passionate about.
This REU has challenged me to work in optics, a field that I know next to nothing about. I’ve never taken a microscopy class and I’ve never operated anything more complicated than your average fluorescence microscope. The past three weeks have been a crash course of protocols and concepts that I’ve never seen before, and in the process I’ve learned valuable lessons about research as a career path.
The primary lesson is that there are a multitude of different ways to approach a problem, and hence many ways to research it.
Finding a field that I’m passionate about is not as easy as interning in one lab and letting that determine my entire problem solving approach. Over the course of the summer I’ve opened my eyes to a new method of diagnosing cancer and assessing the mechanisms of cancer treatments (through single particle trajectories). Cancer is the common enemy, and there’s more than one way to wage war on it. Coming to Austin has shown me that there’s a wider world out there, in both the research sense and the literal sense.
We’re still rising sophomores, so we still have time left to explore more opportunities before we apply to graduate school programs. Here’s to hoping that we find our callings in the next couple years, and complete part of that journey this summer.
-Hannah Horng, Univ of Maryland, College Park
