Is a career in research for me? (and a little bit of randomness)

Many kids go through a stage where they ask the question “why?” after everything. My mom likes to say that I never grew out of that stage and as much as I hate to admit it, I think she’s right. I’m definitely not as obnoxious about asking why as I used to be, but asking why and then trying to find the answer and understand is an important part of research.

While I would like to keep a research aspect in my career, I would also like to be able to help others. This too, has always been a part of my life beginning when I was very young. The combination of these two aspects is why I’m leaning toward medical research. I would like to be able to improve treatments or find a cure for diseases or conditions. By doing this I could potentially help many people.

I went into this J-term thinking that I would like to do medical research as a career. I’m trying to figure out what medical research actually means or what I might want to study specifically, but I can see research in my future. Now that we’re a little over a week into the three-week class, I have found the idea of doing research as a career more appealing. There is just something about it that draws me in. Don’t ask me what that something is, because I haven’t quite figured that out yet, but when I do I’ll let you know. I have found out that the days can be long and exhausting, but they can also be very rewarding.

I’ve found a couple of down sides with doing research as a career. One downfall that I’ve discovered during J-term is the lack of schedule. I’m someone who likes to know what’s going on ahead of time and that’s hard to do when what you do is based on how things from the previous day turn out. I’m pretty sure that I could learn to deal with this, especially if I was doing my own research and planning my own projects. A second downfall I’ve found is the amount of public speaking. There are few things that I dislike more than speaking in front of other people. As we heard from some of the people we met when we traveled to Iowa City, sometimes this fear of public speaking goes away with practice and other times people just learn to deal with it. Because I can’t tell the future, I can’t say which one would be true for me should I go into research as a career. There is also the possibility that I can do research without having to present my findings. A third downfall is the lack of interaction with other people. Although I’m an introvert, I’m not sure that I would want to work alone. During J-term, I’ve basically been working with one, sometimes two, other people, but once in a while I would like to work with more people. The amount of people I work with would depend on where I was working and what I was doing. Obviously there will be downsides to any career, but one can find ways to either deal with those downsides or find more positives that outweigh the negatives.

Although I’ve found downfall with research as a career, I can still definitely see myself doing it and J-term has confirmed that. It has shown me what it would be like to work full time in a lab doing research. Although this is what I think I want to do as a career, change is always a possibility.

My ultimate goal would be to work with clinical trials. In working with clinical trials, I would hopefully be able to have patient contact as well as be in the lab researching to see what works and what doesn’t work. For me, this would give me the best of both worlds. I’m not exactly sure what area I would like to work in, but as of right now my top choices would be cancer research or something to do with neuroscience. In working with clinical trials, I would be able to interact with people as well as do the research that I love. I would hopefully be able to see my work in action.

One of the best things about having a career in research or science in general is all of the fun that can be had. After a peer and I finished a project involving liquid nitrogen, our mentor gave us the bucket and told us to “go have fun.” Now, this was my first experience with liquid nitrogen, so I had no idea what to do with it other than pour it on the ground like she had showed us. We asked our professor what we could do with it and he suggested freezing a rubber tube and then breaking it, so that’s what we did. At first we tried to break it “wishbone style” but were unsuccessful, so we decided to use a hammer instead. Who would have thought that you could shatter a rubber hose? After that we had a little fun pouring it onto the benches and watching the little beads dance and scatter before disappearing almost as quickly as they had appeared. We ended up sending what we had left down the hallway. We essentially sent the little beads down the hallway in a race to see how far the beads would make it before they disappeared. My guess is that they probably went 25 or 30 feet.  We all need a little scientific stress relief once in a while. Come on, you have to admit it, science is fun!

Breaking the rubber hose after it had been frozen in the liquid nitrogen. It ended up shattering all over the lab which resulted in slightly more clean-up time than we were expecting, but it was fun nonetheless. :) 

Here's a short video of us pouring the liquid nitrogen onto one of the lab benches. The little beads that you can see are what we sent down the hallway. Who wouldn't like to do something like this?