UC San Diego Iceland Research!

Exciting news! I was selected to be a part of a sustainability trip to Iceland in August of 2019 through UC San Diego's Alternative Break Program. "Alternative Breaks" offers students the opportunity to study sustainability in various locations while simultaneously serving the communities there. While in Iceland, I will be working with UC San Diego and Holar University College professors to analyze the break down of organic matter. The purpose of collecting and analyzing decaying matter is to track the rate of climate change. I will also be participating in climate change and carbon neutrality education and outreach with the local communities there. I may even have the opportunity to be a co-author on a scientific paper the professor leading the trip is writing.

For now, I will be meeting with my team once a week for the next two quarters to educate myself on Icelandic culture and to begin fundraising for my participation in this program. While I am not sure how I will finance the trip yet, I will be using this blog for updates on the process (and for better explanations of the science I will be doing there!). I also plan on blogging our team's daily activities while I am in Iceland. Climate Change is something I'm really intrigued by, so I hope you find these posts interesting as well!

Ta ta for now,
Emily

Undergraduate Research: The Beginning

Since early April, I have been conducting voluntary research in the Moore Lab at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Throughout fall quarter, I worked on my own research project for class credit, and will continue my research next quarter as a Triton Research and Experiential Learning Scholar (TRELS). I would like to share more about the project I have been working on, how I got involved, and the possibilities I am looking forward to as I continue to dedicate time to this amazing lab!

I am very interested in studying the interface between biology and chemistry at the cellular level (i.e. biochemistry), especially of marine organisms. However, I never considered myself "smart enough" to work in a lab because I found my college lab classes confusing and difficult to understand, and I assumed working in a lab as an undergraduate would give me the same feeling. It wasn't until one of my Scripps professors encouraged me to try volunteering in a lab that I even thought about the possibility. He was kind enough to connect me with five professors in my field of interest. I emailed all of them, simply asking to learn more about their research (because I had no lab experience at the time), and was surprised to receive replies from four of the five of them.

Each professor was looking for something a little different, but each of them were so kind and willing to share their experience with me. After a few weeks of deliberation, I decided to begin working with a post-doctoral mentor at the Moore Lab. The Moore Lab is a marine natural products lab focused on discovering the structures and biochemical pathways of how certain natural products are made in marine bacteria. This research is important for drug discovery and other applications.

I started out extremely unsure of myself. It was a true learning curve to try to apply my knowledge from the classroom to a real-life setting. I felt like I could no longer do the basic math we learned in general chemistry class once my mentor started asking me to compute things. My mentor also gave me weekly scientific journal articles to read. I would read each article 2-3 times and still have no idea what it was talking about. I also had to get over my fear of failure; I didn't want to disappoint, but I soon learned it was better to ask or tell someone when I made a mistake then brush it under the rug and hope it would go away on its own. Luckily, the Moore lab created a safe environment for me to question freely and grow greatly.

In September I began working on my own project with the guidance of my post doctoral mentor. The problem we are addressing goes as follows: In biology, there is this issue called "The Great Plate Count Anomaly" which describes how only 1% of bacterial species in a sample can be cultured in the lab. Because some species are currently unculturable, we are not able to study the metabolic products and other compounds they produce. The project I am working on addresses this issue as it relates to marine bacteria. While some bacteria require special nutrients to grow, it is hypothesized that some marine bacterial species require three-dimensional spaces to grow (instead of the flat agar plates we usually spread them on). My project entails developing an encapsulation technique that would allow previously uncultured bacteria to grow in three-dimensional, micro-orbs. I am hoping that these capsules will mimic the natural environments of marine bacteria so that new bacteria can be cultured and new natural products can be discovered.

Currently, I have succeeded in making this technique sterile and effective for terrestrial bacteria, but because of the osmotic imbalances that affect marine bacteria, I am still working on adjusting this technique. Next quarter, I might be able to move my experimentation to the ocean with the help of the Scripps Pier, and this summer, I plan on getting my scientific diver's certification so I can experiment with sponge bacteria in the open ocean. In the long-run, my post-doctoral advisor and I have ideas to create educational curriculum utilizing this technique to inspire high school students to pursue careers in STEM. I am extremely excited for what is to come, and will post more updates along my research journey!

Get on Your Board

Last weekend I was updating my best friend on some great opportunities that I have been pursuing at UC San Diego when his dad said he needed some of my "Emily luck". At first I laughed, but later I began to question why others perceived me as being a "lucky" person. I always appreciate the opportunities I receive, but I've never considered myself to be unusually lucky. I began to question what defines a person's perception of luck. Is there a way for someone to become luckier than others?

I had a surf instructor who told me that the only way for me to get better at surfing was to try to catch the waves that seemed too big for me to handle. The last thing I wanted to do on my second week of surf lessons was purposely allow myself to be bombarded by massive walls of water. However, the only way for me to catch a lot of big waves was to put myself out among the big waves. Some may say it's luck to catch the perfect wave at the perfect time, but you have to get in the water before you can be somewhere at the perfect time. It's not luck, but the willingness to constantly put yourself in a place of vulnerability that allows you to catch that perfect wave.

Allow yourself to be vulnerable. You have to do it. It's scary. It's intimidating. It may give you some anxiety. But it is absolutely necessary.

Willingness to be vulnerable is the single most important factor in achieving one's goals. If you don't let yourself go where the waves are, you are very likely to miss your opportunity to catch one; if you constantly live in comfort, you will never grow. Reflecting on what I have accomplished during the past three years, I realized that the successes others had attributed to me being lucky actually happened because I live in a constant state of vulnerability.

"But what happens if I fail?" Nothing. Literally nothing bad happens if you fail. What happens if you try to catch a wave but fall? You land in water. Then you get back on your board and try again, growing and learning from your previous fall.

"But what if people judge me?" Have you ever watched people surf? If you have, you've probably seen hundreds of surfers try to catch a wave and fall off their boards right away. Maybe you giggle at somebody's crazy wipe out, but you don't think of them differently as a person. The fact is that it's impossible to judge a surfer for not catching a wave when all you're doing is sitting in the sand. People cannot judge you for trying something they're not willing to do themselves.

Why do we fear vulnerability? Because we fear rejection. Why do we fear rejection? Because we constantly worry that what we do or say will change the ways others perceive us. We dread letting someone else--family or strangers alike--judge our innermost thoughts and desires.

Nobody wants to carry the memory of an embarrassing moment, yet we all have them. You know those moments that we replay over and over in our heads for weeks, months, or years on end? The truth is, the person on the other side of that interaction probably only thought about it for an hour at most. Your embarrassment escapes their mind relatively quickly, so why not let it escape yours? People are afraid to be vulnerable because they fear the long-lasting emotional impact of rejection, yet embarrassment only lasts as long as you allow it to persist in your mind.

Therefore, I dispel the emphasis of luck leading to success. Achieving your goals is not about exhausting yourself through endless hours of work, having a lot of money, or having the most followers on social media. It's about admitting that you are human and allowing yourself to be okay with feeling uncomfortable. Success is not about being in the right place at the right time, but rather making every moment the right place and the right time. When you push your limits on a daily basis, you will surprise yourself.

So apply for that lab position you don't think you're qualified for. Ask your cute classmate on a date. Email the professionals you want to be like. Share the ideas you never thought were worthwhile.

Get on your surf board! Seek that wave you think you can't handle, and simply see where it takes you.