When I was choosing between streams last year I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do. I have worked in a lab before, but I wanted to try something different from what I have previously worked with, which was pulmonary research on mice. Compared to all other streams DIY seemed like the most open-minded lab where I could really choose to work on anything that interests me. That was very appealing and knowing that DIY is one of the most popular streams at UT, I was very excited to hear that I got in.
Even though I have worked in a research lab before, the basic experiments that we were assigned to do during the spring semester helped refresh my memory of all the basic techniques, as well as taught me some new ones. One unusual, but very interesting experience for me was coding. I have never had any experience with computer science before and was pretty scared the first time we had a coding assignment. It was challenging, but the mentors were really open to helping and answering any questions which turned out to be huge help for the coding assignments. And as we did more and more coding, it became and easier and I slowly began to understand it. Even though I didn’t pursue a project involving coding during the fall semester, I am very grateful to have had experience with some coding and I am sure it will be useful to me someday.
Moving on to the fall semester, as DIY students, we were pushed to choose a project of our own. Many ongoing projects that we could join were available including the Waller Creek project, Parkinson’s project and many more. My partner and I really wanted to choose something new that nobody at DIY has done before and we decided to investigate exosomal microRNA in saliva. Probably the most challenging thing was actually starting the project. It took a while to get the qPCR to work, but I think it was one of my most amazing experiences in lab when after one of the qPCR runs we actually got meaningful results. It is this feeling of satisfaction you get from something that you have worked on for several weeks and then one day it just finally works! I consider myself and all my fellow lab mates researchers because no matter what it is that each one of us is working on, we’re all trying to achieve a common goal – answer a scientific question that hasn’t been answered before. And for me personally, it is an amazing thing to see myself and my friends in lab be able to answer complex scientific questions that we once thought were unachievable.
The thing that I enjoy most working at DIY is the sense of community. There are only about 30 students working in our lab and many of them I’m friends with. It is hard to find where you belong since UT is enormous and for me, DIY is one of those places. Our RE Dr. Riedel definitely places a lot of emphasis on helping each other out in lab. Since the first day of spring semester we have been allowed to work in groups on our assignments, and moving onto the fall semester, Dr. Riedel encouraged all of us to team up and work on projects together, whether we’re joining an existing project or creating our own. DIY has had a huge impact on my experiences at UT and I am very excited and looking forward to whatever else is ahead.
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