I still can’t believe how fast the whole summer went by. Between the traveling, research, learning, meeting new people and taking time to realize “wow I’m living in Madrid all by myself” I easily had the best summer of my life. Not only did my Spanish language skills improve, my research skills also greatly improved.
In terms of research I learned how to conduct several behavioral tests (Rotarod, T-maze, T-maze elevated and Object Recognition), perform stereotaxic lesions, perform cell lines, calculate concentrations and sacrifice animals, all while being taught in Spanish. This was my first research experience handling live animals (mice and rats) so that was a very interesting learning experience for me. I didn’t have much fear in terms of handling the actual animals (rats are surprisingly friendly); however, the hardest personal research obstacle occurred when it came time to sacrifice the mice I had been running behavioral tests on for several weeks. Our lab needed to do live decapitations in order to preserve the brain chemistry in the best way possible. Needless to say smells, sounds, and overall scene were a little gruesome. However once the decapitation occurred I learned how to safely remove the brain as well as the spinal cord. I learned a good bit about brain anatomy while doing these.
As is typical with research there are usually unpredicted things that arise.
When my lab partner and I first went to anesthetize the mice for the stereotaxic lesions to inject the toxin, the mice kept having strange reactions and many ended up being fatal. My partner had just gotten her PhD a few weeks before and spent the past 5 years anesthetizing mice and had never seen the type of reactions we were seeing. The mice would start shivering and some turned into full on seizures that ended with the mice dying. We tried everything from changing the anesthesia we were using, to trying different injection sites, to changing the concentration of the anesthesia, to searching the internet for any explanation. Sadly, due to this unexpected event my population size went from 31 to 16. This was very bad because I was no longer able to have proper population sizes for the experimental group. I had to change my experiment from originally including the hippocampus lesions, unilateral and bilateral striatal lesions to just the unilateral and bilateral striate lesions.
- One of the photogenic mice used in the experiment
While yes the mice fatalities were an unfortunate event, I still made the best with the mice I had left. Since my project was just a pilot study the results were somewhat successful and still helped the lab understand a good direction for further research on the topic. The largest success for me was the learning experience overall. Before I began my project I had observed the other projects going on in the lab. I was able to observe PCR, Western Blot, cell line creations, a PhD defense and a lab community much different from mine. The skills I learned there and the people I met were all invaluable to me. Everyone in the lab was extremely helpful and patient when it came to any language issues. My lab partner Carmen was one of the nicest people I had every met and helped me greatly in making my summer and the research as successful as it could be.
- Parc Guell in Barcelona
This experience helped me in my larger goals because it taught me not only skills for work in a research experience, but also valuable life experiences. Just in Spain I traveled to: Madrid, San Sebastian, Barcelona, Valencia, Toledo, Segovia, Granada, Seville. Within Europe I was fortunate enough to go to: Rome, Porto, London, Zurich, Paris & Strasbourg France. All the solo traveling I did greatly helped me become more independent, confident, aware, increased my communication skills, bettered my Spanish skills and provided me with skills for finding the best airline deals. With the things I learned from the research side, I learned more about patience, diligence, recording data, collaboration and many other skills. All of which will greatly help me as a person and a researcher in the future.
I definitely recommend IRES to anyone interested in bettering their research skills and learning about a different culture simultaneously. Something I wish I would have known ahead of time is how few of people actually know how to speak English in Spain and many other countries in Europe. A lot of people in the United States have the misconception that because it’s Europe and the 21st century everyone knows conversational English. However, this is not the case at all, and I was very shocked to learn this while living in a country where English was not well known at all. While this wasn’t as big an issue for me since I came to Spain with a large Spanish language basis, this was still an adjustment and at times frustrating since I didn’t know Spanish science vocab. However, overall, I was happy for the little English, it really pushed me to rely on my Spanish skills and better them. For those interested in the IRES program I reccchoose a country that you know you could confidently communicate in, don’t assume that they will know English.
- Paella from Valencia
Thank you to everyone who made last summer possible: Dr. Rodman (for introducing me to research to begin with), the Emory SIRE & IRES program, Dr. Shreckengost, Dr. Hue & Dr. Alao, everyone in my lab this summer in particular the PI Dr. Javier Fernández Ruiz and all the strangers and friends I met on my travels. It truly was an incredible life experience that I am so grateful and beyond happy to have had the ability to be a part of.
-Oceana Hopkins
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