Sav Cade: Getting my hands dirty
All of my life I have been drawn towards biology. I grew up in my father’s high school science classroom, flipping through old textbooks and pestering him with questions while he tried to grade students’ tests after school. This passion for knowledge about the living world drove me to study it in college, just as my father had done a couple of decades before. Now at my university, I wanted to learn more than what I could just learn in an isolated classroom; I craved hands-on experience in a lab. This led me to apply to internships, spending my spare time writing essays and pleading for letters of recommendation for different universities’ summer programs that could give me the chance to spend six weeks in a professional research laboratory.
After a few months of waiting, I finally got my wish at a nearby university, one that I almost attended for my undergraduate degree, Clemson University’s Summer Program for Research Interns or SPRI for short. I was given the opportunity to work alongside a new member of Clemson’s research team in the plant and environmental science department, studying a species of mycorrhizal fungi and its relationship with plants. Originally, when I was accepted into the program, I was given very little information about the lab I would be spending my summer in, and even less about what they were studying there. I was told in just a couple sentences that their research involved taking dirt samples and analyzing them to see the concentration of mycorrhizal spores. I literally thought I would be spending six weeks looking at dirt and collecting samples in South Carolina’s summer sun. Needless to say, I was not thrilled, and part of me desperately wanted to just hold out and hope that another program had accepted me. Unfortunately, I only ever heard back from Clemson, so I was stuck with dirt.
Arriving at Clemson, luckily, I knew a few other students who were attending the program, so I wouldn’t be completely thrown to the wolves at such a large university. Though I didn’t think this when I started in the lab that Monday. I arrived over-prepared and overdressed, wearing business attire when the researchers all came in wearing jeans and t-shirts. I was shown to my small cubicle in the corner of the lab, butting against the back wall, farthest away from the other researchers. My first day was filled with awkward interactions between my mentor and myself. She told me she had never had an intern before, let alone one that would be there for such a short time as only six weeks. All she knew to do was to give me work, but what could she entrust to some kid she just met? She didn’t want to give me jobs that could lead to me messing up her research, so instead she gave me a textbook on organic chemistry and a binder of every paper published in the lab. I was horrified to say the least. The first week involved me reading papers, not only from the lab I was working but as well as outside research papers, with the intention of me learning all there is to known about mycorrhizal fungi so I could actually do what I was there to do. I spent eight hours a day for the first five days just reading and reading and reading. I was surprised my eyes didn’t pop out of my head by the end of the week.
That next Monday, I walked into my mentor’s office and asked her what to do next. She had the exact same expression on her face that I did, blatant confusion, as she searched her brain for some menial task she could give me that wouldn’t involve me getting into any trouble. I could tell she just wanted me out of her office and back to my cubicle, so she said, “Come up with a research question and bring it back to me.” That was it, my chance to actually do something in the lab. I thought to myself if I could come up with an interesting question that was relevant to what the lab focused on but was also beneficial to the university, she may just let me do it.
Lo and behold, I did it. I honestly couldn’t tell if she was impressed with my experiment idea enough to let me do it or she just wanted me out of her hair again, but either way I would get the chance to work in a lab, doing what I had sought to do.
While all of my friends in other labs were just sent off to make copies and count specimens, I was developing and conducting my own research project about how this fungus helps plants take unobtainable nutrients from the soil. This was an opportunity that I had never expected to get, especially not so easily. To me, this project was a chance to help reduce the application of fertilizer in a large scale agricultural setting by giving the plants access to nutrients through the fungus.
Over the few weeks I was at Clemson, I went from nearly falling asleep at my desk to suddenly being excited to walk into the lab, all because I was doing something that I enjoyed. With this dedication to such a specific subject, I became incredibly passionate about my topic, even if it wasn’t exactly of my choosing. I had started my time at Clemson dreading having to study dirt, of all things, but I came to realize that even though it is dirt, it isn’t just dirt. The soil beneath our feet has entire ecosystems living within it. Relationships between this fungus and thousands of species of plants are hidden from us, but by just digging a little deeper, we can see that there is so much to that part of our world.
The last few weeks of my internship flew by in a haze as I spent the majority of my time either in the giant greenhouses or sitting at a lab bench looking over the slides I had made, collecting data and working on my presentation. I honestly didn’t see much of my research mentor over those last few weeks, except for the odd question and her name popping up in my inbox when she had some notes for me to look over. While I don’t think I made the best relationship with her, I still believe she was one of the driving forces to push me into continuing research at Lander. If not for her and her lack of experience being a mentor, I never would have ventured so far outside of my comfort zone, let alone imagined I would have enjoyed it as much as I did.
While continuing my research at Lander, I am constantly taking experience from my time at Clemson to help me here. Without the past struggles at Clemson, I wouldn’t be able to fly through the research and projects I’m doing now, and I wouldn’t have the confidence to present at Chattanooga this coming spring. Looking back, I know there were a lot of struggles and venting to my friends over a cafeteria table, but without those problems, I wouldn’t have pushed myself to live up to my full potential as a student or scrounge up the courage to officially call myself a scientist.
Sav Cade is a senior biology student at Lander University with minors in history and psychology. They are a member and current president of the Lander chapter of Beta Beta Beta, the national biology honors society, as well as conducting research with Dr. Rick Klann in catfish parasitology. After graduating, they are planning on attending graduate school at Clemson University and going to teach secondary education biology.