In just a few short weeks, I\u2019ve already learned a tremendous amount from my Kenan Fellows internship. My mind is constantly racing thinking about all of the things I want to do, make, and create based off of my experiences, so much so that it is often hard to actually sit down and focus on one thing!<\/p>\n
So far in the lab, I\u2019ve been able to sit in and observe a lot of different processes. I\u2019ve watched the feeding, splitting, and managing of cell cultures, which requires a sterile procedure to ensure that the cells aren\u2019t killed or contaminated. I\u2019ve seen and helped out with the preparing of agar plates for future experiments. I\u2019ve learned that the word laser stands for \u201cLight Amplification by Stimulation Emission of Radiation\u201d. And, I\u2019ve had the chance to watch cells be imaged with the big fancy microscopes, which are a far cry from anything I\u2019ve ever seen or used before! The idea of watching a cell go through mitosis, live and on camera, right before my eyes, is SO COOL! However, in practice, it has at times made my eyes droop – not from boredom, but from the act of sitting in a warm, quiet, dark, imaging room for two hours at a time. Can you blame me? It\u2019s worth it in the end when we get a time-lapse of a cell, and when we can see the process of mitosis through from beginning to end. How amazing is it that I get to be here and watch it happen?!?<\/p>\n
A big takeaway from this experience is that being in the lab and being in the classroom have something quite obvious in common \u2013 sometimes, things don\u2019t go as planned! Quite a few times, we\u2019ve been working on something in the lab only to find out that it didn\u2019t work \u2013 like when the microscope stopped working during imaging and when the computer crashed (twice) during another imaging session, or when the gel on an electrophoresis machine cracked and we had to start all over, and that time the lens wasn\u2019t the right one for the microscope, sending us on a goose chase through a six-story building.<\/p>\n
Being in the lab, I\u2019ve also learned how much of what goes on here is a team effort. No one single person is on their own, and there is always someone around to help collect data, prepare materials, or talk thorough ideas as needed. It\u2019s just like in education \u2013 no one person holds all of the answers, and we have to rely on each other to make sure we are putting our best work out there.<\/p>\n
Lastly, science is for everyone, and \u201cyou don\u2019t have to be super special to do science\u201d (Thanks for the quote, Paul!). I\u2019ve always known that in my head, but here, I’m feeling it in my heart. I don\u2019t think I truly felt it deep down that I could do this, too, until I sat down with sterile hands and helped exchange media for a cell culture or planned to thaw and culture a cell line all on my own. Science is empowering, and I can\u2019t wait to take what I\u2019m learning and experiencing here back to my students and to my classroom and help them feel empowered to be scientists, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In just a few short weeks, I\u2019ve already learned a tremendous amount from my Kenan Fellows internship. My mind is constantly racing thinking about all of the things I want to do, make, and create based off of my experiences, so much so that it is often hard to actually sit down and focus on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer-internship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-efelker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}