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Texas REU: BME CUReS Cancer

reflections

, Filed Under: 2016, cancer, learning, reflections

Mindset and Emperor Readings

This summer I’ll be reading Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, where author recognizes there are two types of mindsets after conducting a study on children trying to figure out puzzles that increase difficulty. The mindsets she finds discovers are the fixed and growth. The fixed mindset represents the individuals that only go through life on their genetically given abilities and intellect. In comparison,

the growth mindset are the individuals that rise to a challenge and don’t necessarily care if they get something wrong but want to learn from their failures.

Photo by Alston Feggins of the trees by Moore Hill Dormitory.
Photo by Alston Feggins of the trees by Moore Hill Dormitory.

I had parallels to my own life from the suggested situations that resulted with either a fixed or a growth mindset to my own life. I wonder if someone can have a varied mindset that is situational rather than having one or the other.

I have as any other college students have experienced failure if it was from grades to projects to life. I know that I cope with failure knowing that it’s a part of life but the little voice in my head is my own devil’s advocate that always reminds that it would be alright to sit in my own self-pity and eat ice cream all day because I experienced failure. Though I do crave and have ice cream, but I do pick myself up and make a plan on how to correct the situation.

Does that mean in the moment I allow myself to sit in my self-pity is because I have a fixed mindset?

When I read the section on failures, the fixed mindset was fixated on the failure itself and wanting to self-destruct. The growth mindset was learning from their failure and wanting to know what they did wrong so they can correct it for next time.

The growth mindset is how innovation occurs where individuals see a problem and think of ways to solve such problem. This problem-solving method draws parallels in The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a historical journey from first discovering cancer to the developments of better equipment and treatments. The book flips from situations of a doctor treating a patient that was just diagnosed with cancer to a doctor testing new experimental drug on live patients with childhood leukemia. There is one front but played in different sections around the world of researchers, medical physicians, families and patients all working together to fight against cancer.

-Alston Feggins, Florida Institute of Technology

, Filed Under: 2016, graduate school, reflections, research

Considering Research as a Career

Photo by Hannah Horng at the pedestrian footbridge across Lady Bird Lake
Photo by Hannah Horng at the pedestrian footbridge across Lady Bird Lake

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

, Filed Under: 2016, cancer, reflections, research, texas4000

Cancer Research Dedications

Every week at our group meeting, we go around and volunteer “dedications” stating who we are dedicating this week of work to and offering a thank you to the people that made it possible. These dedications range from deeply emotional to practical to lighthearted, but their tone does not diminish their truthfulness. At least personally, a dedication to my coffee maker is as legitimate as one to my high school teachers as both are responsible for my ability to get up every morning and perform research. Dedications to grants and funding are popular as well, a pragmatic necessity to make any kind of scientific research comes to fruition in this day and age. These dedications could happen at any workplace – I’m sure dedications to coffeemakers happen worldwide – but ours are special.

same fight different fronts
Same fight, different fronts. (Photo credit, top: Sydney Hutton; bottom: texas4000.org)

Everyone who sits in that room, undergraduates, graduates and investigators alike, is dedicated to a common goal, curing cancer.

Cancer is such a highly personal disease that I doubt that one person in that room does not think of a particular person in their life when they walk into lab. Maybe it was a relative who struggled with cancer, a beloved teacher or friend. And even if he or she has not had a felt the influence of cancer strongly, human compassion links everyone emotionally in the fight for a cure.

No one feels the weight of these dedications more than the Texas 4000 riders who have recently embarked on grueling physical journey to raise awareness and funds for cancer research. Their persistence and ability to push themselves mentally and physically to complete a ride to Alaska is awe-inspiring. Every steep uphill or cramped muscle is weathered by personal endurance, willpower and a supportive community joined in the fight.

And this week I offer my appreciation and thanks to the whole-hearted dedication of the Texas 4000 riders who spend their summer biking as a physical manifestation of thousands of years of suffering by cancer victims and hundreds of years of research by doctors and scientists to find treatments.

This week as I enter the lab I am going to attempt to embody their determination and perseverance as I learn from my mentors and perform my own research.

I hope that through very different yet parallel journeys this summer, we can spark awareness, compassion, unity and innovation.

Sydney Hutton, Stanford University