I recently joined this lab not knowing what to expect. I had many thoughts going through my head. Was I going to like it? Hate it? Spend all day and night in the bioscience building? Was it going to be like the typical labs you take for micro or o-chem (a bit boring)? Turns out I enjoy it! I don't spend all day and night in the lab (not yet anyway). I like the lab because it's interesting to see what you learn in your text books actually being applied. It is going to challenge me to think outside the box and to come up with ideas as to why an experiment has results I didn't expect. I realized that all that information in our books may seem simple, but the tremendous effort scientists have to input to reach such conclusion is indeed
not fairly simple.
The first couple of weeks were a bit overwhelming. My first day went like this: Another undergrad started explaining what his project was about. So, I was getting tons of information thrown at me, some I was familiar with and some I was not. Then I sat in lab meeting
completely lost. The boss and the rest of the lab members were talking about experiments. It was like they were speaking another language! I'd have to say after about a month I'm not
completely lost anymore, but I definitely still have
a lot to learn!
Then slowly the undergrad I work mostly with started letting me do simple things little by little. I was worried I'd screw up and the results would be inaccurate, and so I made mistakes. It turns out it was OK to make mistakes and it definitely happens with new undergrads. So I've realized its all part of the process! And this is why we're at the bottom of the food chain. Haha.
