Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello, just to warn you all, this is gonna be a long one.

I am a highschool senior (freshly graduated junior year) and have been interested in a career in, more specifically, biology. Both sadly and thankfully, there are hundreds of options to pick from within the field; this leaves me at a crossroads going in a million directions. My family and friends are less than qualified to really advise me and counselors, as well as teachers, have been only of little help. I would seriously appreciate some guidance from actual experts in fields I have interest in since you would have the most answers to my more specific questions. I would also love resources to find more people within your fields since networking is so cruical. My issue is finding people within the field willing to communicate rather than actually communicating with them, which is why asking a forum full of experts seems so ideal.

Ok, enough with the backstory and onto the actual meat of this post:

I want to do bleep research-based, preferably medical, and, primarily, I want to do bleep that will improve society. More specifically, a big ambition of mine is to find treatments or cures to currently incurable/untreatable diseases. This has led me to discover fields such as immunology, neuroscience, pharmaceuticals, genetics, Epidemiolgy, and i'm open to discovering new possibilities as well! What i'm trying to ask for is a summary of your work if you're in one of these fields. I am terrified of majoring in bleep I hate, especially when becoming a researcher takes so long and so much money.

Some specific questions i generally have:
1) What is a day like at work for you?
2) Do you study anything more specific? (ex: genetics you focus on specifically on Huntington's)
3) What's bleep you dislike about your field?
4) Do you believe you have made change within your career?

Feel free to answer any, none, or more than the listed questions. Write me a whole essay, the more info the better in my opinion. Write me a single sentence saying your job is cool, I'll appreciate your time you gave to me!

Thank you for your time, consideration, and advice!

These are great questions. Unfortunately, we may not have Experts helping in the forums right now with a background in this area.

You may find helpful information in the Science Career profiles on the site. Many do include links to videos or interviews with individuals talking about their careers. You can search here, setting the filter to either Health or Life Science: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ers/health

Amy
Science Buddies

Hi Nanaorama!

Biology is such a diverse field, and picking a niche can understandably seem daunting, but I think that's the beauty of being a scientist! Sounds like you've already begun researching into this, and I really think you're on the right path! To answer your questions:

1. I work in an academia-based research lab. A typical day would involve an experiment where we process certain samples and turn them into DNA or RNA so that we can sequence them and identify certain mutations, chemical changes, etc. For example, I recently worked with heart tissue samples from mice, where some tissues were designed to mimic a heart attack. Processing tissue samples means finding a way to dissociate them so you can extract nuclei and DNA. The end goal here is to hopefully understand gene pathways of congenital heart disease and build potential cell-based therapies to repair diseased hearts.

2. At this time, no. My lab specifically collaborates with other labs, where they send in their samples, and we help process them into DNA or RNA libraries (libraries are essentially a collection of genetic material), so we work with a diverse set of sample types, aiming to study all sorts of human diseases.

3. Not necessarily bleep I dislike, but wish I had known was how repetitive the work can be. Working in a lab sounds exciting, but on a day-to-day basis, your work is essentially pipetting and working on your computer. I would compare working in research to cooking except you have to really know your ingredients, and those ingredients cost a lot of money and may sometimes be biohazardous. bleep unfortunate that is also happening in academia currently is budget cuts within the NIH. Research grants are primarily funded by the government, and the process is very competitive. With cuts happening, this process becomes even more difficult.

4. I feel like it's hard to feel like you made a change when you're working in genetics. Reaching the end goal is a laborious process. From the initial steps of designing and failing an experiment to actually succeeding, but getting low-quality data. You can imagine how much trial and error is involved, so after working on the same project for months, you might start feeling burned out. But nothing beats the feeling of bleep you worked so hard for actually working! Working in research is more of a behind-the-scenes role as opposed to people in healthcare who are working with patients directly, but the impact your research could have could reach millions.

To add to your research interests, have you looked into clinical research? It sounds like bleep you would be interested in. Best of luck with everything!