Labwork II

I enjoyed working in the lab because of the latitude of freedom afforded to me; I could design the experiments I felt were most important, plan out my week in advance, and control the flow of activities. I really like the intellectual scientific part of it: determining what controls I should run, interpreting data, correlating findings with expectations. Much of my learning came from the troubleshooting and meticulous review of my experiments. Though frustrating, it is very rewarding to apply knowledge about theory to a very specific experiment gone awry.

The people in lab were fantastic. We had a lot of celebrations this summer, and one of the medical students who was taking a year off to do a Howard Hughes is an incredible cake designer. Having older medical students working in the lab was lots of fun; we had a lot in common to talk about and I could hear about all the scary things awaiting us in third year. It was interesting working in a large high-powered lab; though we saw our PI not unfrequently, most of the day-to-day was run by another PhD. I feel like I got a lot out of it, though I did not produce much. It was fun. I was funded by the Foundation for Anesthesia Research and Education (FAER) through a Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellowship.