Student Research at Duke

Two weeks have passed since the end of the Research Fellows Program. Turning my genomic preps and other DNA samples over to my mentor at the end of the program was a frustrating process. I felt like I had hardly skimmed the surface of my topic in my eight weeks of research! Not only did I just begin to answer my research question, but each new piece of data I collected made it more and more clear that the answer to my research question was hardly a matter of black or white, yes or no, but rather a much more complex situation that would require weeks, months, maybe even years of research. I finally realized, however, that this was a perfect example of the frustrating, yet exhilarating paradox of science – the more data one collects, the more unanswered questions that will surface. Knowledge is merely a gateway to show scientists how much we don’t know. Nature isn’t about to hand over her secrets any time soon, that’s for sure. But I guess that’s what makes science so interesting, so enticing – there is always a way that you can make a difference, even if it is a small contribution because there are an infinite number of questions to answer! It isn’t possible to “fail” as a scientist, unless you reject the idea of the pursuit of knowledge altogether. Making mistakes and exploring inconsistent or unexpected experiment results in science can sometimes be even more helpful than perfection. Just listen to Peter Agre, the Nobel Prize winner who discovered aquaporins by chance while trying to look at the human blood Rh factor. That said, I think that my experience in the Research Fellows Program has further convinced me that my future lies in science.