Below is an email I received last night and is posted with student permission. Other names have been changed.
Good Afternoon,
I have spoken to Mrs. Gilden about my senior project earlier today. While I was handing in my journals to her, we began talking about my experience and whether or not I liked doing my senior project. I have been hearing from quite a few people who have not enjoyed this project and a few people who are struggling but do like what they are doing. For my project I was shadowing a microbiology lab director, Jane Doe, she runs the XYZ lab located in ABCXYZ, RI. In this lab I studied Environmental Microbiology, used bacteria to create plates and worked with water samples from beaches, homeowner wells, and storm drains. This lab tests mostly for E Coli in these water samples and lets the towns know if certain beaches need to be shut down or if the homeowners well is contaminated. I had my own side project between helping the lab technicians with their work, which consisted of making plates, running Api tests, and swabbing the mouths of my cat and dog (Is a dog's mouth really cleaner than a humans?)
I have to be completely honest, when we were told that there was a deadline for a topic I was stressing out and totally unsure of what I wanted to do. My mother tried to help me with this, telling me to think of the activities I like to participate in. I thought of drawing, but someone did that last year. Horseback Riding / Horse Training, wouldn't really work because I already have many years experience with horses. After that it was very hard to try and think of a topic I would be willing to do. A while before I had to start thinking about senior project I began to explore the ideas I had for my life after college, chemistry, Ceramics, then Microbiology.
Now onto the good part, I believe that this project is supposed to help us gain experience and knowledge we need for conversing with bosses, colleagues, and customers. I know that from my amazing experience I have learned to do all three of these things plus a large amount of laboratory understanding and techniques I will be able to use later in life. Before starting the field work for this project I was skeptical about going to the lab because I did not know if I would like it, and if I wanted to do this as a career after college. I have to say, this project has confirmed my ideas of going to college for Microbiology. I do not know where I would like to go yet, but I know Microbiology is what I want to do.
There is something else I want to tell you before I end this email, don't worry it's nothing bad, it's actually amazing and I am very excited about it. There is a girl at this lab, her name is Jane DOE, she is going to URI for clinical microbiology (Hospital lab). She and I were talking about college and her career. JAne DOE told me that next summer URI would be setting her up with an internship, possibly at Rhode Island Hospital. She told me that since she is taking the internship she would not be at the lab next summer and asked if I would be interested in being a lab technician next summer. Then a few days later (the next time I went to the lab), my mentor, and Jane Doe were talking about Jane DOE being gone, and again I was asked if I would be interested in being a lab technician.
I believe that this experience has left me with a lot of useful knowledge about this lab and the environmental side of the microbiology field. Choosing the correct career to study is a major part of having fun and enjoying what you will be doing for this project. I know at first I really did not like the idea of Senior Project, but now I absolutely love it because I gained experience I would have never had without it.
Thank you very much for this opportunity,
Kasey Ellis
No comments:
Post a Comment