Phew… A Break from the Math and a Look Into “The Biodesign Center Experience”
Divya p -
Hey everyone!
My blogs until now have been a lot of math and coding, so I decided to take this blog to talk about my experience working at the ASU Biodesign Building and some of the ups and downs of coming.
Being at the Biodesign center has been eye opening. I get to see many working professionals from different backgrounds either individually working or interacting with people inside labs or workspaces/cubes. Infact, for me as an intern to have access to those highly restricted work spaces, the Biodesign center requires that I take 4 training sessions (watching videos and taking 30 question quizzes on them to which I had to score greater than 80% on each quiz to pass), which, not going to lie, took a long time to complete. Only then I could get my badge and have access to all the workspaces and labs inside that building.
I go every Wednesday to the Biodesign center for a long period of time. In that period, I either attend lab group sessions where 10+ faculty members meet to discuss the progress they have gotten or work individually with my mentor. If a person has a presentation upcoming, then they schedule to present their material in that lab meeting with all of us listening. I am actually scheduled in the lab group to do my practice presentation for the senior project soon. Working individually with my mentor has been a lot of fun and learning as well. Every Wednesday, he assigns me the next task, and I get working on that right away. Through this internship, I’ve realized that in college, nobody holds your hand through each step of the process anymore. When my mentor said I am going to use R language to code, he didn’t teach me each function of R and didn’t walk me through how to do each assignment. I was expected to self-learn the language, and am required to complete my assignments (coding series in R, calculating instantaneous and annual infection rate for faucets, showers, and toilet flushings) all by myself without other guidance. They are treating me like a college student, which means I have to figure out a lot of the work I do by myself, so that part isn’t easy.
Even if it is tough work, I do enjoy learning how my future is going to look. I’ve self-learnt a new coding language and experienced the professional working setting, so I’m glad I took up this internship.
Thank you, and see you next time!
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