Week 2

Prompt 1. What is the biggest challenge face at your internship?
As minors, the other intern that I work with and I cannot do much at the lab. Our age holds us back and prevents us from completely immersing ourselves in the world of a laboratory assistant. However, we are allow to observe many things and what we are able to do does have some importance to the lab or to our learning experience.

Prompt 3. How has or do you see your internship changing the way you consider that paths your future will take?
So far in my internship I have noticed that many of the students there are almost 25 and are just finishing their biology related degrees and they are still undergraduates. This gave me sort of a reality check as to how long it will take me to get to Medical School as I plan. I used to think that I would be half way through my medical school career by the time I was 25 but now I know that it might take me longer than that.

Prompt 6. What lessons or experiences at you internship will you bring back to school to help you to further improve in your academics?
 One of the students at the lab once mentioned that in a science or biology related academic career you should always write things you hear and/or don't understand down. This is important because it helps you with researching further into the topic and learning something knew that could be very helpful to your education.

Week 1

The environment at the VA labs is very welcoming and friendly. As a newcomer I am glad to see how okay everyone was with explaining things to me and the other intern. Also I enjoyed how many procedures I was able to observe especially on my first day. I like how people still take their work seriously and still are able to joke around. It makes me feel as if everyone in the lab are a huge group of friends. They all hang out with each other This reminds me very much with how I usually feel with my classmates. The concentration of friendship with them varies but they are all still my friends. Also our school focuses on the students and teachers bonding and becoming like a family which I imagine has something to do with it. 

I was very pleased but also surprised with how many things I was able to do. Although we are not allowed to handle  the animals that are used for the tests, we are allowed to watch the students do their procedures and they explain to us what they are doing and the reasons why. We also have been taught how to use various machines, mix important buffers used in the tests, and prepare things that will be used to examine or extract results.

Pre-First Day Post

It is the day before internship. I will be working at the VA Hospital in one of the laboratories I will be assisting the Gradstudents and other people who work in the lab with some of their tasks, somethings that I will be doing are labeling vials, washing the glassware that they use in the labs and other such tasks. I will also observe the experiments that they conduct. I hope that I am able to provide as much help as I am able to. My reason for choosing an internship in a laboratory is because I plan to become a doctor and wanted to see how new treatments are created. I don't really know if I have any dreams for this internship. I know that I want to learn as much as possible from the experience. I don't have any fears for this internship, I know I will succeed in my project and in helping the students who work in the laboratory.