Puzzles
My grandma brought me a 3,000-piece jigsaw puzzle when she visited five years ago. A shirt reading "My grandparents went to India, and all they bought me was this lousy shirt" wouldn't sound all that fascinating to most people. In my case, the puzzle elicited a quite different response. Once I could, I opened the box and poured the puzzle pieces onto my board. I worked on the puzzle for hours at a time, building my excitement as more and more of the picture was revealed. Until the picture of a beautiful forest was complete, I reduced the amount of time I spent sleeping. For a brief moment, the puzzle was the center of my attention.
I've learned patience, attention, and tenacity from working on puzzles. This is how I interact with the world around me: as if it were a problem I'm trying to solve. As seen by the many puzzles adorning my home, I have a natural affinity for science because it takes the same logical and levelheaded attitude that a puzzle does. Combined with my drive to learn more about life's mysteries, this intellectual stimulation persuades me to pursue an academic career in scientific research.
This summer, I worked in a UCLA cardiology lab to better understand how atherosclerosis might be prevented by studying proteins linked to HDL. I was given the duty of verifying that the viruses we were working with were packed and recognized correctly after certain studies yielded suspicious findings. Weeks of DNA gel runs searching for specific genes in each virus produced conflicting findings. Instead of giving up on my project because I was frustrated, I became even more motivated to uncover the truth. I studied every facet of the experiment, going backwards until I reached the
Because my primers for amplifying the DNA were nonspecific and inadequate, we were unable to discriminate between the three genes of interest. For my experiment, I decided to look at protein content instead of DNA sequences because I knew this. Two of the three viruses were, in fact, right, as I demonstrated, but the third virus, repackaging was required. The undergraduate student I was working with benefited greatly from my efforts since he was able to modify his experiment to account for this third virus.
An incredible event I had while working in a lab Despite the fact that I renounced the beach in favor of playing with viruses and chemicals, the want to learn more about proteins inspired and drove me still. I'm quite proud of the small but crucial part of the atherosclerosis puzzle that I was able to contribute. The satisfaction I had after completing the 3,000-piece puzzle my grandma gave me was eerily similar to the satisfaction I got after completing my work in the UCLA lab. This is a feeling I hope to have for the rest of my life, because the atherosclerosis conundrum is by no from the last of its kind that I intend to solve.
