Jong-Eun Park, COL ’25, Johns Creek, GA
I was desperate to find a research lab for the summer towards the end of spring. Luckily, through a friend’s recommendation I was able to secure one on campus. It was my first time working in a wet lab and living by myself over summer.
I worked under Postdoc Fellow Huasheng Yu on his somatosensation projects. I helped him set and clean up behavioral experiments using mice in the beginning, but eventually I got proficient enough to conduct the entire behavioral experiment by myself including injection, recording, and analysis of videos. I wish I had started the trainings for mice handling before summer because I wasn’t allowed to deal with mice experiments until I had completed them. I made some mistakes trying to finish the behavioral experiments as fast as I could, but I quickly realized that mistakes are bound to be made when rushing through them. Especially when one session of a behavioral experiment costs about 45 minutes, you don’t want to redo it. Though I was dealing with more of the nitty gritties of research, I asked Dr. Yu about what he plans to do with my results and what step of the research it is in. It was impressive to know that he was simultaneously working on three projects while I still didn’t have a full grasp of one.
After 10 weeks at the lab, the chemicals and instruments that seemed so disorganized at first were very familiar to me. I was going in and out of animal facilities to carry mice on my own, and I knew where to go to get ice and store solutions within the Johnson Pavilion building, in which my lab was located. I’ve felt as if I have become an independent researcher myself. I hope to go back in the fall and maybe even conduct my own research as a Junior or Senior.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2022 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here.
