May 12, 2009
After spending my entire career as a student throughout both high-school and college learning about theroies and the work other scientists have done it was an amazing opportunity for me to work in the Heng Zhu research lab in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, department of pharmacology.
Last year, while sitting at the assigned table at my cousins wedding, I began to casually talk to a younger couple sitting at the table with us. After a little small talk I found out that both of them were biochemists at Johns Hopkins, one nearly completed her graduate school and her husband a post-doc in a research. We then spent the rest of the night talking about his research and how amazing it was that I was a bio-chem major and we had just happened to be at the same table. At the end of the night we exchanged e-mails and several weeks later I was working as a research assistant in his lab.
At the site, I was able to do a variety of things. I was working on a project dealing with assaying the entire human kinome and generating a novel database of kinome substrates, in particular I was given the sub-task of testing known serine/threonine kinases to see if they also functioned as tyrosine kinases and vise-versa. This job included many standard labratory procedures including, solution preperation, protein assays, southern blots, cell culture and plasmid vector creation and even using a robot to print proteins onto high-density protein micro-arrays.
In terms of the science related to the site, I found that not only had everything I learned in science classes up that point come into practical use but also science well beyond what I have learned. My time in the lab showed me that in the practice of science, subjects cannot easily be partioned of like they are in each science course, one expeirment may and often does require the coordination of many different branches of science. Although our main goal was to analyse kinases, a predominately bio-chemical subject it was neccessary to use methods and practices from genetics, to cellualar biology, organic and inorganic chemistry and many more. After leaving the project I was astounded at how much I had learned from four months of working in the labratory, I now have an extensive knowledge of kinases and how they work as well as how science works in the real world.
Working at this site has opened my eyes to my future. After spending so many hours in the lab, I thought I would be sick of even thinking about it. Yet by the end of my expeirience, I found that the opposite was true, I wanted more. I enjoyed every second on the lab, including the tedious hours spent meticulously analyzing data. Before I entered this lab work, I was unsure of what I wanted to do in the future, I had thoughts of doing research, or being a doctor or even a lawyer, but at the end of my time in the lab I realize that I want to be working in a lab of my own one day, hopefully as a researching professor. This experience has really helped me devolp a clear vision of what I am passionate about and how I can make it possible. My site supervisor was instrumental in this and I cannot thank him enough for not only the opportunity he gave me but also the support and advice he provided in this early stage of my career as a scientist.
I cannot re-iterate enough how amzing this experience was, it opend a door in my life and I cannot wait to see whats past the lobby. It showed me that it is possible to enjoy working when you do something your passionate about, and that this world of science is the place for me. Before I had only thought of science in terms of passing my next test or getting that A, but now I realize that science is much more exciting and rewarding than what we see here in the science classroom.