My practicum site was in the Vascular Kinetics Laboratory located on the 4th floor of the A. James Clark Hall. I found this site around the end of my Freshman year by searching up “UMD undergraduate research opportunities” which led me to the Office of Undergraduate Studies Researchers Database site. From there I was led to the Department of Bioengineering website where I looked at all the research labs they had and read their descriptions in order to see which ones were of interest to me. When I compiled a list of labs that I was interested in joining, I created a template of an interest email basically, but then I altered each email to address each professor/PI conducting the lab, and added a small note of what I specifically drew me to their lab. Some of the professors that I emailed never got back to me, and some of them got back to me, but said they were only accepting graduate students. When I contacted Dr. Clyne, she told me that her lab was completely full for the summer, but that she might have more positions available in the Fall starting my sophomore year. I made sure to keep note of this, (1) because I was genuinely interested in joining in the lab, but (2) because Dr. Clyne was the only PI that said there was an opportunity for me rather than just saying her lab was full and ending it at that. I emailed her a few days before the Fall semester began, and she connected me with Callie Weber, one of the graduate students in her lab who ended up becoming my supervisor. Callie has been the best teacher that I could ask for in my first lab research experience. She held my hand through the baby steps when I was just learning the proper techniques that would be used in our lab, and then guided me to slowly becoming more independent in order to learn and become more confident in my work. In order to get a research position in a lab, I would advise future SGC scholars to do what I did and compile a list of potential labs that you are interested in, and email them all one by one, from the lab of most interest to you to the least. Make a template of your email in order to make it easier to send that next email in case the first few PI’s don’t have a spot for you, but make sure to add a personalized statement in each email letting them know why you’re interested in their lab specifically. I performed brain endothelial cell culture, YSI experiments, Western Blots, Membrane Fractionation, TEER, and Immunocytochemistry. Through these experiments as well as observation of my fellow lab members’ experiments, I learned the importance of staying healthy and taking care of your body because so many things can affect your endothelial cells. With endothelial cells being in the position that they are to facilitate diffusion of blood, and thus substances vital to keeping us alive, to important parts of our body like our brain for example, we want to make sure that we are doing our very best to avoid things that would damage these cells in order to prevent cardiovascular diseases. This experience this past year in lab has allowed me to gain an appreciation for those that do research for a living. I knew people did research for their careers, but before this I’d never thought about how research was applied at the practical level when it might come to patient care for example. I’ve always thought of research as an inquiry to the outlandish hypothetical, and in some cases, it is, but that never clicked with me that it translates right over to what I want to go into as my career as a future physician. I would never have the opportunity to even learn what I will get to learn in med school if it weren’t for the work that the researchers are doing to further understand how certain things affect our bodies in order to work with physicians, or even as physicians themselves, to curate plans in order to treat or prevent patient unfavorable health conditions.