Bethany Bagwell: I Can’t Believe I’m Really Here!
For years I’ve known that I wanted to be a scientist. My freshman year of high school I caught a glimpse of what I wanted my future to be – standing in a lab conducting my own experiments involving DNA. I vowed to myself that one day I would make that happen.
Fast forward to my sophomore year of college, it was time to apply for internships. I was nervous because I hadn’t yet had any real experience in a lab before. I’d participated in labs through my classes at Lander, but it was still a class. Now it was time to start applying for internships. It was time to start paving a way for the career that I wanted.
I ended up applying to ten different opportunities, all with varying topics. Some had to do with counting and identifying fly characteristics in order to determine genetic inheritance. Others involved various aspects of botany. I even applied to simply be a bystander in lab, cleaning glassware and filling pipette tip boxes whenever needed. Ultimately, the University of Georgia accepted me into their Fungal Genomics and Computational Biology internship program. It was the only one I got into, and I was determined to make the most of it.
When I arrived for my first day, it turned out that the program’s title was just a tad misleading. It was actually a miscellaneous grouping of internships where the programs around campus that didn’t quite fit into other groups were placed. Instead of working with fungi or computational biology, I was actually placed in a canine research lab. It was my dream come true. I had always wanted to go into cancer research, but I’d never expected to get hands on experience so soon.
During orientation I was sweating like crazy. The anxiety was getting to me. What if I wasn’t good enough for the internship? What if I failed?
When my mentor, Jasmine, finally came in all my fears were settled. She was the kindest person I’d ever met. She walked me up to the lab and introduced me to the team. As she was giving me the tour of the lab I asked her to tell me a bit about herself. Turns out she was in her third year of earning her PhD. She was developing a protocol – essentially the instructions for how to conduct an experiment – for T-Cell Receptor sequencing that was being adopted from the protocol for mice. She was also working on ELISpot, which is an experiment to determine cytokine excretion in cells. It was safe to say that she was amazing and that I was thoroughly intimidated. But the whole first week she was extremely supportive. As she taught me the ins and outs of the lab she made sure to give me positive reinforcement and make sure I was comfortable and knowledgeable. By the next week, she expressed that she had complete confidence that I could conduct my own experiment. She said I was a natural and assigned me to work with Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machines, a tool used for DNA amplification.
Bio-Rad iCycler Thermal Cycler with MyiQ Optical Module
When I ran my first experiment I was again nervous. I was put in charge of finding the optimal concentration of primer and RNase enzyme for multiplex PCR and RNase H2-Dependent PCR. Once I heard all those big words I’d never come across before, those same worries I’d had at orientation came back. What if I wasn’t good enough? But now I knew better. My mentor believed in me. She trusted me, and I wasn’t going to let her down. I had taken notes on everything she’d said. I’d absorbed her words like a sponge. I knew the experiment I was running, and I knew I could do it. I was confident that I had paid attention to my mentor’s teachings and knew what I was doing. Even if my mentor wasn’t physically present, she was there in my notes. I reassured myself that I wasn’t lost or confused, because my mentor’s words were there on the paper next to the protocol I had written. Her advice, her teachings, everything she had given me was right there. As I went through the experiment I consulted my notes and maintained my confidence. When I had finished the protocol and my mentor returned, she complimented me on my results and how I conducted myself in the lab.
After a few weeks of running experiments on my own, some failing some succeeding, Jasmine trusted me to enter the cell culture room.
The cell culture room is a heavily controlled room where live cells are grown in media so that experiments can be conducted with them. You could only enter one door and exit the other. A UV light had to be turned on to keep the hood – a ventilated work bench where the cells could be handled in a sterile environment – and anything that was inside sterile. Everything had to be sprayed with ethanol before it could enter the hood and come in contact with the cells. Being that I was new to the lab and lab work, I wasn’t allowed in there in the beginning. I was inexperienced and Jasmine couldn’t risk me contaminating the room and killing the cells.
Once I proved myself, I was allowed entry. I was so excited. I put on a lab coat and gloves so that I wouldn’t contaminate anything. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do any experiments since I hadn’t been trained in experimental techniques for the cell culture room, but I knew that it would be motivation for me. I would one day get to a point where I could work and be hands on in a cell culture room. I would reach my goal and achieve my dream.
Once the ten weeks and my internship had come to an end, all the programs on campus came together for one all-encompassing poster presentation. I created a poster that began with that first experiment I conducted on my own and presented the results I had obtained. I stood at my poster for about an hour and half, presenting it to anyone who would listen. The whole lab even came out to see me present.
I had a wonderful time, and I wasn’t nervous at all. The anxiety I felt at orientation, conducting my first experiment, and when faced with something new hadn’t reared its head.
By the end of my internship experience, I had gained mentors, friends, and a newfound confidence in myself. That confidence came from experience. It came from my now proven ability to understand and conduct experiments all on my own. I know now that I can accomplish the goals my 9th grade self had set her mind to. I can carry on and develop the passion my high school freshman self had discovered in biology class.
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Bethany Bagwell is a junior Biology major with an emphasis in Genetics. She completed her Summer 2024 breakaway during her Research Experience for Undergraduates program at the University of Georgia. She plans to attend graduate school and earn her PhD after graduation.