Winter Brake of 2014, I made the horrible decision to go back to work at Walgreens for the holiday season. Next time I decide to work retail during the holiday season, somebody please remind me what a bad idea that is. So moving back to school for Spring Semester 2015, I was determined to avoid Walgreens for the summer and thus began my quest to find summer funding. I called this quest Operation Secure Summer Research Funding and it was firmly a go.
Since I was serious about staying in Cincinnati for summer I applied for every summer fellowship that I was eligible for ( WISE, SURF, McMicken STEM fellowship). I spent what felt like hours on hours filling out applications and I was about to give up and start looking for a summer job either at home or at the university so I could continue in the lab at least part time. Finally when I had just about given up on getting a summer fellowship, I got word for the University of Cincinnati's Office of Graduate Education that I had been offered a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). When I got the email I was eating lunch with my roommates and I whopped with joy so loud that they and everyone else around us thought I was crazy. I was just so incredibly jazzed that I was not going to have to go back to retail for another summer!
Of course the down side of doing SURF was that I would be staying in Cincinnati for the summer. So after I bribed a friend of mine to help me move up a couple of hills to my new apartment , I headed home to spend a little bit of time with my family before starting in the lab full-time for the summer. SURF orientation was very interesting since majority of the students in SURF are not UC students and so they were meeting their labs for the first time and I was going back to work in the same lab that I had worked in for a semester. I missed out on a lot of the SURF events since I worked on main campus however the small army of undergrads we had in the lab got very close over the course of the summer so I don't feel like I missed out on anything. I also presented a lot of Honors orientations this summer or as Sophie and I called it "inspired a lot of 1st years" which was great! I really enjoy all that I get to do with honors ambassadors. Despite being a little removed from the bulk of SURF and still manged to attend a couple of events the most interesting one being a "Introduction to Surgery" that was amazing and increased my desire to go into surgery. The highlight of my summer by far was presenting my research at the poster session SURF held at the end of summer. Being able to talk about my research with other people in the scientific community was such a serial experience. I got to explain what I do and why I do it to people doing equally ground-braking research and unlike my friends and family they could actually understand what I was talking about! Well actually presenting was amazing and I cant wait to do it again but the true highlight of my summer was learning that I will be publishing my research some time early next year.
I had an amazing experience over the summer working in my lab and as I continue into the fall semester I can't wait to see what I will do next.
Since I was serious about staying in Cincinnati for summer I applied for every summer fellowship that I was eligible for ( WISE, SURF, McMicken STEM fellowship). I spent what felt like hours on hours filling out applications and I was about to give up and start looking for a summer job either at home or at the university so I could continue in the lab at least part time. Finally when I had just about given up on getting a summer fellowship, I got word for the University of Cincinnati's Office of Graduate Education that I had been offered a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). When I got the email I was eating lunch with my roommates and I whopped with joy so loud that they and everyone else around us thought I was crazy. I was just so incredibly jazzed that I was not going to have to go back to retail for another summer!
Of course the down side of doing SURF was that I would be staying in Cincinnati for the summer. So after I bribed a friend of mine to help me move up a couple of hills to my new apartment , I headed home to spend a little bit of time with my family before starting in the lab full-time for the summer. SURF orientation was very interesting since majority of the students in SURF are not UC students and so they were meeting their labs for the first time and I was going back to work in the same lab that I had worked in for a semester. I missed out on a lot of the SURF events since I worked on main campus however the small army of undergrads we had in the lab got very close over the course of the summer so I don't feel like I missed out on anything. I also presented a lot of Honors orientations this summer or as Sophie and I called it "inspired a lot of 1st years" which was great! I really enjoy all that I get to do with honors ambassadors. Despite being a little removed from the bulk of SURF and still manged to attend a couple of events the most interesting one being a "Introduction to Surgery" that was amazing and increased my desire to go into surgery. The highlight of my summer by far was presenting my research at the poster session SURF held at the end of summer. Being able to talk about my research with other people in the scientific community was such a serial experience. I got to explain what I do and why I do it to people doing equally ground-braking research and unlike my friends and family they could actually understand what I was talking about! Well actually presenting was amazing and I cant wait to do it again but the true highlight of my summer was learning that I will be publishing my research some time early next year.
I had an amazing experience over the summer working in my lab and as I continue into the fall semester I can't wait to see what I will do next.