In the third and last installment of this mini-series, we will hear from two science-focused majors who found unique ways to fill their summers.
Elizabeth Chin is a sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering on the pre-med track, and she took up a position at a physical therapy and sports medicine clinic last summer. Chin had been a patient at the clinic for a previous injury and was able to build a relationship with one of the physical therapists there.
“Around halfway through [my first] year… I reached out to him and just gave him my resume [and] explained why I was interested and what I hope to learn from the internship,” Chin said.
As a pre-med student, Chin is also part of the Tufts Pre-medical Society, but didn’t find them particularly useful when trying to find an opportunity for the summer.
“I would say that [biomedical engineering] doesn’t exactly translate to physical therapy,” she said. “[And] I was really looking for a clinical experience, or clinical internship, and for pre-med it … should be done in a hospital setting. But… I thought maybe I would want to explore physical therapy. So I was like, why not just see it how it goes?”
Chin went into the clinic four days a week while also working to get her EMT certification.
For physical therapy, clients usually spend the first half hour of their session with the physical therapist and the last half doing exercises with a specialist. Chin usually shadowed the physical therapist but slowly moved towards shadowing the patient evaluation process to gain exposure to new cases.
“The biggest things I learned were, one, professionalism, just through interacting with the other [physical therapists], my co-workers and with the patients. And then second was building interpersonal connections with the patient,” Chin said. “In the beginning I didn’t know how to exactly talk to them or ask them how their day was … but I think over the course of the summer, I got better at being a friendly face that they could see when they were going through treatment.”
While Chin had a great experience last summer, she realized she didn’t want to do physical therapy in the future. So this summer she is looking to do some type of volunteer work and potentially working on an ambulance with her EMT certification, which would count as clinical hours. She has also been applying to biomedical lab positions.
“And even though [the PT internship] wasn’t in a hospital, the clinical experience I got working one-on-one with the patient, getting to know them, getting to interact with them and see how that relationship works — that made me want to pursue medicine even further,” said Chin.
Annika von Schoeler-Ames is a junior studying biotechnology and biology. During her freshman year, von Schoeler-Ames knew she wanted to get involved with research on campus and started looking for potential labs on the Tufts website. She started by reading through each lab’s recent work and sending out cold emails.
“My biggest piece of advice would be: Don’t be afraid that you don’t know anything,” von Schoeler-Ames said. “It’s good to be really curious and put yourself out there. Send that cold email. Talk to the professor. Even if you really have no clue what the research is and you feel like you don’t even know what's going on in your classes, you’re there to learn. That is your job as an undergrad … and the right lab will support you through that.”
Von Schoeler-Ames ended up getting a response from the Karl Munger Lab where she then met with the principal investigator of the lab.
“We really got along. I met with some of the Ph.D. students [and] I actually got to go to one of their lab meetings which gave me a great feel for how the lab worked. And [then] they said they’d be happy to have me,” she said.
The Karl Munger Lab operates under the Tufts Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The lab studies oncogenic activities of human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that is the leading cause of cervical cancer.
“I knew I was interested in genetics [and] molecular biology so this kind of lab focus was right up my alley,” von Schoeler-Ames said. “I work closely with a Ph.D. student who’s working on her thesis. … Her specific research is focusing on the HPV 101 strain of HPV, which is not one of the formerly identified high-risk HPV types, but has recently come up in conjunction with a lot of cervical carcinomas.”
Von Schoeler-Ames has worked in the lab during her freshman and sophomore summers, as well as throughout the school year. In the summers, she works five days a week and sometimes during the weekends. However, once the school year rolls around, she has more flexibility in creating a schedule that fits with her classes.
During her time in the lab, von Schoeler-Ames has also had the opportunity to take on smaller projects of her own, including her current project which focuses on the role of a long non-coding RNA. Her lab experience has also contributed to her time spent in the classroom.
“I think it finally all came together for me when I took molecular biology last spring,” she said. “Learning, like having experience in the lab, and then going back to the classroom is also really helpful for just kind of understanding how these things all fit together.”
As for this coming summer, von Schoeler-Ames would love to join the lab again, but is keeping herself open to another type of experience — maybe in the life-science industry.
In the long run, von Schoeler-Ames plans to get a Ph.D.
“I would like to stay within the general molecular biology [and] genetic side of things. I have really enjoyed cancer research so far … [but] I don’t feel like I’m totally bound to that,” she said.
That concludes this internship mini-series. In it, we have followed eight students with majors spanning from International Relations to biotechnology. These successful interns are just a sample of the larger student population who flock to secure the right summer internships for themselves. But in talking with these eight, it is clear that all have used their summers to explore and delve deeper into the ‘why’ behind their motivations and passions. For them, the summer is a glance into what their own futures could hold — whether they decide to follow that path or not is up to them.
