Week 1:
Baylor College of Medicine

June 3, 2014

It has been a wonderful journey of the SMART Program. Wonderful here means that I have learned a lot from both my sweet and bitter moments of the past week.

My lab is working on how different dietary proteins affect muscle growth in early development. My supervisor, a postdoctoral from Spain, assigned me to understand both the techniques and the knowledge of the topic we are working on. I was assigned to write a strategic plan for my own project. I spent endless hours of researching and reading. Yet my final draft for the proposal was turned down. So, I will have to start again. My postdoctoral is starting his experiment in four weeks. I will be the one who assist him in this experiment because he only arrives at this lab two months before I did.

In the lab, I learned to do Western Blot and started to know what is going on. During the first few days, I just watched a lab technician doing Western Blot and asking questions. I ran my own gel on Friday and the picture came out really well! I was very excited.

Besides laboratory work, the SMART program gives students different opportunities to attend scientific talks and discussion for graduate school and medical school. The department I am working with, which is Children Nutrition Research Center also offer weekly meeting discussing about keep laboratory notebooks for research career and interview skills for not only medical school/ graduation school but also for job search. I am very thrilled to attend all those meetings because I have learned so much about the professional world that I would never know if it were not for this experience.