The internship that I completed over the summer of 2023 (May 28, 2023 - July 24, 2023), was done at UMD as a part of the university’s FIRE Program. I was accepted into their Bacterial Pathogenesis Stream and worked for eight weeks within the microbiology building. Over the course of this eight week internship, I worked with other students that had been accepted into this stream and we learned about this stream from the TA Sam Chung and Trish Esguerra and worked under Dr. Cherisse Hall. The goal of this internship was to learn about a bacteria known as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is known to be a common cause of catheter-associated urinary tract infection, also known as CAUTI. Despite this bacteria not being particularly dangerous to people initially, it can be extremely dangerous if a person has an open wound. If this bacteria gets into the body and the infection is not properly treated, it causes a multitude of problems such as bladder failure, liver failure, kidney failure, and deterioration of the endocrine system.
One of the great things about this internship was that every single day of this internship, I was doing something different. In total I did about seven different protocols and every protocol took about 2-3 days to complete with different tasks each day. Some protocols took as little as 30 minutes to complete while others took almost more than four hours to complete. Even though I completed a variety of protocols, there were certain things that I did every single day. For example, I was always using a micropipette because I was always making some type of solution. Additionally, I was always writing in my lab notebook. This was to help keep track of what we did during each experiment and helped us plan out what we needed to do for future experiments. Some of the other materials that I used pretty often were ethanol (to clean surfaces), petri dishes (for the Bacterial Transformation protocol), inoculation loops (also for the Bacterial Transformation protocol), and centrifuge tubes (to hold a specific volume of pipetted liquid).
By using my analytical and critical thinking skills, the theoretical concepts that I learned about in BSCI161 helped me in my Practicum. In BSCI161, I learned about the scientific cycle. Essentially you start by creating the hypothesis, planning out the experiment, performing the experiment, assessing the results, and depending on that, creating a new hypothesis or coming to a conclusion. This helped me to navigate my experience in the lab as I had to come up with a hypothesis to see if the under expression of a specific gene would hinder the pathogenic abilities of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
My practicum did require me to collaborate as a part of a team and we all worked well to achieve our goal. Every protocol that we did, we made sure that everyone understood what was going on. We were also very committed to our deadlines. If we decided as a team that we wanted to complete an experiment or an assignment by a certain time, then we would all work towards meeting those goals. The only time a person would be excused from not completing their work is if there was an extenuating circumstance. I played the same role as everyone else in the group. I conducted experiments and wrote in the lab notebook like everyone else. It wasn’t a familiar role as this was a role that I had done before in past labs. The only role that was new to me were the types of experiments that I had to complete.
I would definitely recommend this opportunity to future SGC students. One of the main things that drew me to this internship was that they did not ask for a GPA. During freshman year, I was still adjusting to college life and properly managing my time to get things done. In the process, my grades were not the best, and I was a little nervous how that would be when I tried to apply for internships. Luckily, FIRE took that fear away and I was able to experience the internship of a lifetime. Another thing I absolutely love about the FIRE Program is how hands on it is. There was never one day of my internship where I was sitting around doing nothing; there was always something to do.