Student Research at Duke

Hey, my name is Jackie Sink and as part of the Howard Hughes Research Fellows program I will be researching in the Cancer Biology Department, working with medical oncologist Sally J York. My first few days of research in Sally’s lab were extremely eventful. It is definitely an understatement to say that I was overwelmed in my first few days in research! With no significant research experience under my belt, the complexity of lab life came as quite a surprise. I realized just how much I didn’t know about the basic techniques of science - how complicated dilutions, elecrophoresis, and even growing yeast plates could be if you have never been forced to perform it yourself before. I had to recall all of the things I learned in high school but thought I would never use. I guess it was good to realize that those things you learned oh-so-long-ago will definitely come in handy later in life! I’ll have to confess to being spacy during my first week. I remember my first experience with electrophoresis being less-than-successful. First try: Didn’t put the correct amount of loading buffer into the wells, so the results were skewed. Second try: Didn’t plug in the machine! Waited a half hour, then was completely flabergasted to find that the DNA had not moved at all. Third try: successful! Let’s just say that success is so much sweeter following failure.

Here are a few pictures of my new lab space:

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.