To put it simply, my third rotation was different.

Leaning toward joining my second rotation lab, I picked my third rotation advisor not because of the research focus but because the PI (primary investigator) was a new and enthusiastic professor. Seriously, this PI is one of the most passionate people I have met within the field of science. I had met them on my interview weekend and really enjoyed hearing their take on academia as a recent post doc. As they told me about their research I kept asking “You could apply that to cancer, right?” and they would say, “Yeah, but we’re doing it with muscular dystrophy in the heart” or “Yeah, but we’re looking at the liver.” The scientific area they looked at in the lab (RNA expression/splicing) was a secondary reason why I chose the lab for my last rotation.

I knew I didn’t want to look at the liver or the heart, but I thought I’d try just to see if it sparked my interest outside of cancer in general.

I solidified my decision for doing my third rotation in the lab before I began the second. Then as I began my second rotation, an opportunity to form a collaboration for a grant related to cancer arose and I suggested my third rotation advisor as a collaborator since the techniques used in that lab could be applied to our research. We together wrote our letter of intent for the grant and I began planning a project for me to do during my rotation.

Unlike most students who begin their rotations and are introduced to the lab’s work then given a project, I came in to the rotation declaring my project and was given a side project to get used to the techniques of the lab before applying them to my precious samples. I was given some papers related to the liver work that I was doing but other than my introduction, I never really had a conversation about what I could do with it as a thesis project. I found out at the end that they had that kind of discussion with other rotation students but because I was so set in my ways that there was no need to convince me to switch my interests from cancer and the immune system to the liver.

While I ended up not joining the lab, I had a great time getting to know everyone in the lab (though it was relatively new, there were a lot of undergrads to get to know in addition to the grad student and post doc). I will definitely miss them but I hope to continue to the collaborative project with the lab so I will still get to interact with them. Nonetheless, this rotation re-introduced me to techniques I hadn’t used for many years such as western blots (which I had done in biochemistry lab) and PCR (which I had done in my first undergrad research lab), which was nice to go back to (and made me sort of nostalgic about my first undergrad lab)! So overall, it was quite enjoyable.

I ultimately ended up joining my second rotation lab, but I am glad that I complemented the first chemistry-focused lab developing chemotherapeutic agents and the second immunology lab focused on developing immunotherapies for brain cancer with a lab focused on understanding the RNA expression and splicing changes in disease and development. I ultimately joined the immunology lab, but as I’m researching potential directions to go with my project, I am finding ways to include the three distinct labs in which I did my rotations.

Unlike many students who came in to the program knowing that they wanted to work in a particular area – be it microbiology or biochemistry – or a particular topic – such as non-coding RNA – I came in with a general purpose to have my work relate to cancer therapy. I rotated in both biochemistry and physiology labs that were in quite distinct areas of chemical synthesis and characterization of potential drugs, immunology, and RNA expression. My list of potential research advisors included PIs from all four departments in my specific graduate school. And I went to seminars for all departments as I found some related to my interests in every department.

While I may have a different way of deciding my thesis lab, being much more of a generalist, I think in the long run, it’ll do me well. It’ll help me be a more well-rounded researcher with a broader scope of the implications of my work and the methods available. It’ll also keep things exciting. Instead of being a specialist in a certain scientific level be it biochemistry, microbiology, physiology, etc., I hope to be a specialist in a disease. Pathology is so complex that I feel this is a good perspective to have for my ultimate goal. Throughout the fall, I have made great connections with professors and graduate students during my rotations from many different areas who I can go to for help throughout my journey, and I can’t wait to get started in my permanent lab!