About that opportunity . . .

After my awesome experience with Schlumberger, I returned to MSU for the summer to do research and take a summer class. This last spring I was doing research for a professor in the Cardiovascular and Tissue Mechanics Laboratory. Since I was in Indiana, the research was through email which meant that it was proofreading grad students papers. The professor seemed to like me and asked me if I wanted to work for him this summer and to apply for a program called EnSURE (Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Experience). However, I had to take this one class this summer in order to stay on track and keep my semesters from being cluttered by ....unimportant classes. Therefore I had to convince them to let me take the class while I was working. Hey, I'm Sara, I can handle it. (I actually have done it before, last summer to be exact, and I am never doing that many classes and an internship at the same time ever again)

So come to find out, this program is geared towards applying to and interest in Graduate studies. I did happen to be thinking about grad school when I was in Indiana because of all the engineers that had decided to go back for their upper level degrees. I am still not sure if I want to go to Grad school. I would like a another degree but the research I would have to do doesn't get me very excited. The other thing is that some of the Grad students that have only done research and never worked in the industry are missing some big skills. The industry teaches a lot of things that you cannot learn in a lab writing papers and reading books. I think I would like to eventually get a PhD, possibly skipping a masters. This program and job has made me realize once again, like I already had mentioned before, that I hate sitting in a desk working at a computer. So in some ways this job is driving me a little insane, which is making me question if I could handle doing it for 3 to 6 years to complete a degree.

Everyone works on their own, only on their specific topic, everyone (about 8 of us) sit in this tiny little room completely quiet all day long, and I never know what I'm supposed to be doing. It is lacking a little bit of collaboration and direction that keeps me interested, happy, and completely sane. The research topics are interesting, don't get me wrong. We are looking at the aorta and more specifically abdominal aortic aneurysms which are really interesting. My grandmother has recently been having a lot of complications with different parts of her aorta as well as her carotid artery, which we also look at. Besides aneurysms some of the topics explored are related to strokes and the relationship between the spine and a aneurysm.. In terms of the topic I am always interested, it's the research part that is a little slow.