In my previous post, I explored the tension between resources and opportunity when research labs take on high school students. In this post, I will mainly focus on the value of experience and training the next generation of professionals.
Beyond gaining the few lines on a resume, interning at a research lab instills in students countless traits and teaches them intangible life lessons. I would like to share a few lessons I have learned this summer.
If there’s one thing my PI has drilled into me this summer, it’s that communication is key. “Part of being a successful scientist,” she told me in my first week, “is having good communication and organization. If you don’t have that, your work ends up falling through the cracks, and someone else will have to repeat it.” At first, this seemed like standard workplace advice. I was wrong.
Every person in the lab has specialized knowledge that others lack. Even the Principal Investigator (PI) cannot match the nuanced understanding that comes from spending weeks analyzing a dataset or performing a finicky cell assay. Therefore, frequent meetings to present and discuss findings are necessary. The PI, bioinformatician, cellular biologist, animal coordinator, and lab manager all know a piece of the puzzle, but findings are only as good as how clearly they are understood and built upon by others. Communicating well means thinking from your audience’s perspective. For me, that took the form of reformatting graphs to be understandable at a glance; reordering sentences to be concise and precise; only conveying relevant information. This is a crucial lesson I will take with me into any project.
Another invaluable lesson I’ve learned is that opportunities don’t appear out of thin air. Taking initiative and carrying through is the most powerful action to grow. Each time I stepped outside my comfort zone, whether proposing a different visualization for our flow cytometry data or asking to sit in on a clinical meeting I had no business attending, I discovered that the worst-case scenario was rarely as catastrophic as my anxiety suggested. My most valuable learning and growth moments resulted from taking initiative. I will carry this pattern of embracing discomfort into every future endeavor.
Last but not least, the most unexpected education came through casual conversations with the people working alongside me. They had with decades more experience. They were PhD candidates grinding their dissertations, MD students balancing clinical rotations with research, MD/PhD students exploring both healing and discovery, and oncologists who came face-to-face with the diseases we study. They all imparted advice that textbooks cannot provide. Furthermore, each connection I made could be an opportunity for something bigger in the future. Each person is part of a unique web of human resources. Tapping into that is extremely powerful.
While what we learn in a research lab may not directly benefit that lab a decade later, it will certainly develop the next generation of scientists and professionals. We, teenagers, are works in progress, with the potential to make remarkable impact, but we still have a lot to learn. I believe that the only truly effective way to learn is to experience. Allowing high school interns to work in a research lab, even if just for the summer, is the perfect way to provide that experience.
Telos and Tangents 
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