A High Schooler’s Experience at University & Lab Research
Adventures as a high-school student, university student & nanotech research assistant (all at once!)
For the past 5 months (Sep. 2022 — Jan. 2023), I participated in the University Cooperative Education Program (UCEP). I spent my first semester of grade 12 studying at the University of Waterloo as a part-time student (taking a microeconomics course), full-time high school student, and high school co-op nanotechnology research assistant at the QNC Undergraduate Nanotechnology Engineering Labs. Here’s some real life-changing stuff I learned…
TL;DR
- Lab work, research, and studying all need to have these things in common: fun, patience and thinking in the moment.
- Questions are your best friend to be good at faking it till you make it
- You are going to need to do some serious wandering to find a good spot at UWaterloo, try DC, STC (2nd floor), STJ, DP or SLC first
- That first semester of university is all over before you even realize when you started, so make the most of it and plan well!
What it’s like to be a high school researcher
I spent a lot of time in the lab, and in the nanotechnology instructors’ break room researching. Even more time when my microeconomics university course (as part of UCEP we take university Econ101 or Psych101) was finished and all I had left were high school courses for the rest of that semester.
Here are some of the projects I did in the lab:
- Gold nanoparticle glucose biosensors that change colour depending on the concentration of glucose a sample being tested has. This took SO LONG to get right!
- Silver antimicrobial nanoparticles to be used to kill yeast and fungi as a 1st-year undergrad teaching lab.
- Copper antibacterial nanoparticle bandages for hospitals to reduce the risk of hospital-associated infections (HAIs).
- Gold nanoparticle Lung Cancer sensors that were used to detect HPV-Associated Lung Cancer Using Salivary Biomarkers via LFIA (rapid tests like those in pregnancy and COVID-19 tests)
- We actually won silver for this project in the Youth International Science Fair (YISF), which was my very first science fair ever! Here is the extended abstract we submitted.
Here are a couple more things I learned…
We do things because they are fun! As Dr. Seuss says “if you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good”
As a high school student running around one of the biggest tech schools in Canada, it is really strange to be the youngest everywhere you go. The constant reactions of pure “awe” and confusion were funny at times. But, the constant underestimation of my abilities not only as a girl in a male-dominated field but also as a girl 5-plus years younger than every person you meet is frustrating.
In September, the beginning of my studies, I found I was always trying to consume as much new information as I could to “fit in” with the environment of really smart people around me and surprise, surprise: I remembered almost nothing.
Eventually, I met another student in her fourth year of nanotechnology engineering who was so miserable that she was doing several weeks' worth of lab work for a guy she absolutely hated. It was all she could focus on for months. So, one of the incredibly wise nanotechnology engineering lab instructors who I worked with daily mentioned the importance of fun in work:
We have to find the fun and life and everything we do, because when we don’t it is a lot more likely to be a complete waste of time.
When we don’t even try to be interested in some task or concept it is a whole lot harder to learn from it, which makes it even harder to remember.
From his incredible wisdom, I’ve found out that the best way to learn new things is by finding the fun in it. By the way, it is a whole lot harder to find something good about what you are studying when you are reading or studying something really dull for what seems like forever. Over time, you will get stuck in a constant state of apathy, where everything becomes dull.
Patience and thinking on your feet is hard when you don’t know where or how to start, but it’s a lot easier with some good old practice and questions to get you started
In around mid-November, about halfway through my UCEP experience, I started trying out an idea of my own which involved synthesizing copper nanoparticles. One of the lab instructors asked me why I was making these nanoparticles and I responded with the go-to answer of “to see how they could kill bacteria”. Then he asked me about the applications, and since only working in the lab for about a month, I had no clue what he was talking about. This was my first experience where I needed to think beyond what I was doing at the moment. I just read an article about copper’s antibacterial abilities and wanted to replicate it, never stopping to think about how it could help humanity.
Everything we do in the lab, should have some application in the real world: To teach, to heal, to improve, etc.
After the fact, I found this very funny because I had never been exposed to this way of thinking in school before, I never even thought it was necessary. I never thought to think about why anyone would want to waste their time and brain energy thinking about something later on if they’ve got the time to do it while they are being tested, or experiencing the learning at the moment. I did this constantly in school: studying, taking tests, doing a rat dissection. In school, we learn material first and figure out what to do with it later, instead of being tested first to learn while testing
In high school, we only think about things after they’ve already happened, not before in preparation, or even during an experiment or problem. But doing this thinking in the moment is just as important if not more because it allows you to:
- Better understand the process when it is already happening right in front of you
- Make modifications to your actions on the spot, and learn from them on the spot
- Forces you to think about the other possible applications to lead to some really cool and “way out of the box ideas” that are hard to come by to sitting at your desk trying to remember the experiment with the notes you wrote while you were thinking about why Gary, SpongeBob's snail, sounds like an old cat. (Just me? 😅)
In the lab, found patience incredibly hard on its own, but on top of that learning to think on my feet in order to understand what is happening in front of me was even harder.
So, the #1 thing that helped me in being able to practice this skill of on-the-spot thinking is…
When in doubt, ask questions.
Questions are the best way to fake it till you make it:
Why is this thing turning pink so freaking SLOW?… → How does this chemical make this do that?… → If I use this chemical will it have a similar effect but not require so much energy to heat it?… → What if I distribute this into smaller vials?…, and so on and so on.
1st-time University Student Experiences
The past semester I completed my second university course (the first at a real, giant lecture hall at a university — the other was online): Microeconomics, ECON101.
Through this, I developed a lot of great and not-so-great study habits. Most importantly, found that I definitely do NOT want to study economics.
For all you high school people going to take university classes for the first time:
- Even though mostly everything you’ll learn in class is nothing new from high school, read your syllabus, make your study plans, and make lots of smart friends EARLY on (like from day 1) because that first semester of university all goes over before you even figured out what just happened, it is less than 4 months!
- I recommend using the Notion timeline and/or roadmap features and templates as I found it easier to keep track and visualize everything horizontally, here are some free examples: Full syllabus template, Timeline tracker template, Full dashboard, Course organizer (has a spaced repetition tracker which is super helpful & easy to recreate).
- I also found Microsoft OneNote super helpful for notes. You can download lecture content write all over it and even record lectures as it keeps track of specific moments of your typing.
- In university classes, there are A LOT of rhetorical questions that you are supposed to stay quiet for especially in large lecture halls. I did not realize that so it is safe to say there were lots of awkward situations where I was the only one in a 300+ lecture hall with my hand way up in the air and complete silence all around. 🙈 In smaller classes, speak up!
- I recently found out how awful it is for teachers when no nobody answers their questions through talking with an assistant professor friend. So, by her words:
Even if you are the only one in the room, or barely even have a half thought, just answer something. You’ll never know where this conversation can go and it can even lead to memorable experiences for everyone.
My favourite places @ UW:
- The Dana Porter (DP) is the place to go for a book on anything you can think of with the word history in it (history of science fiction, civil wars, etc.)
- The DC (Davis Centre) is the place to go when all the tables are full and you need a place to work (on the ground near a plug) but are willing to sacrifice your time walking to find a good place.
- The St. Jerome's library (or empty classrooms for quietness) is the place to go if you want to see self-moving bookshelves & want a quiet place with lamps that have buttons.
- E5 (Engineering 5 building) has lots of cool things everywhere you look, you can even make your own 3D things here! There are lots of cool design teams here where you can get free tours and find a new hobby. Click here to see all their design teams.
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Hey! I’m Julia, thanks so much for reading my article. Right now, I’m curious about exploring solutions in brain cancers with the new generation of drug delivery, nanotech!
I’m also interested in clean, carbon-free energy solutions, synthetic biology, and space tech, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn and subscribe to my newsletter!
