Summer Internship

Being only the second week of school, I often find myself still reminiscing over this summer’s activities. The major thing I did was land an internship at MilliporeSigma. For those of you who may not have heard of this company, it is a biopharmaceutical research and development lab. While I cant get too in depth about the work I did (got to love an NDA), I would like to briefly talk about the over-arching theme of handling myself as a true scientist.  During my ten week period with this company I learned a lot about project management, attention to detail, and the pure fun that science really is. Every day I would wake up ready to go tend to my cell cultures, bioreactors, and daily routines that I regularly found myself falling into. The knowledge I gained working hands on in the lab was second to none and an over all great experience.

As mentioned previously, this job helped me deal with time and project management. At any given time I had three maybe even four projects to take care of over the course of an eight hour work day. At first it was a daunting task to juggle what seemed like an overwhelming work load until I realized that this is what I loved doing, I loved being in the lab and bouncing between projects, working with different coworkers and building bonds with some extraordinary people who helped me out along the way. Going in to the internship, if you had asked me to set up a planar cell culture in triplicate for transfer into a 50L bioreactor, I would have looked at you like you had five heads. Now, looking back, I know I can get that done in 45 minutes to an hour and move onto the next project. Needless to say, I loved my job at MilliporeSigma and the skills that I came away with are almost invaluable and ones that I will use everyday.