Week Eleven – Gas Mileage

Hi, everyone! It’s hard to believe high school is nearly over and my graduation is next week. Thank you to everyone who’s read my senior project blog and to those who have commented, helping me refine my own ideas (I even re-used some of my responses to those comments for my senior project paper ^^). I really enjoyed reading the blogs of my fellow students, and I would’ve loved to watch them present.

My internship experience affirmed that biological research is the field I will pursue in college. I enjoyed collecting data, the atmosphere of the lab, and the fact that you’re constantly learning, whether about the structure of the cell or how to operate some new device the lab has ordered. I would like to experience science transforming within my lifetime from a close viewpoint, like my internship mentor, Dr. Liotta, has. It would be wonderful if I could help contribute something pivotal to that, as he did when he helped invent laser capture microdissection at the NIH in 1996. Happily, I will return to CAPMM to work over the summer.

Some interesting statistics about my 11 weeks at the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine: in total, I made 33 trips to the Center. Since it’s about 30 miles each way, I drove nearly 2000 miles! No longer do I cower at the thought of the highway (unless, of course, it’s undergoing large-scale construction).

Thank you to BASIS Independent McLean for allowing this internship to happen. Thank you to the people at GMU, especially Dr. Liotta, Purva Gade, and Marissa Howard, for mentoring me and thoughtfully answering my intern questions. Thank you to the teachers and students at BASIS for an incredible high school experience.

Signing off,

Raleigh