28 Jun Anna Countryman | BNI | Week Three

Hi all! I’m having a super cool and unique mindset shift from being here at Barrow. I came in super set on Biomedical Engineering, but the longer I’m here, the more interested I’m becoming in neuroscience and medicine. I think it’s largely due to the variety of careers around me that I’ve gotten to learn from. Our seminar on Tuesday was done by a neurosurgery resident. He talked about his unconventional path to going into that field and what his day-to-day work was like at each stage. He made the point that you don’t need to follow a set path to achieve your goals in the field. He had started as a business major, switched into something more scientific, graduated from undergrad, and went to Europe to play professional basketball for 4 years before medical school. He also took some time to give us an overview on different, less rare issues in the brain, like tumors and aneurysms, and spine while explaining specific techniques used to treat them. It all was super appealing and fascinating to me. During the Q&A portion, he went into detail on how reframing your mindset is the best way to get through challenging times. He used examples of nights when he’s on-call and having to share bad news about a patient. He mentioned that if reframing doesn’t help you enjoy the work, then maybe you’re meant to do something else, which isn’t a fault, but good to know. 

Project-wise, I’m getting a clear vision on what I’m doing. As I mentioned last week, I received all of the behavioral data, like the Halstead Finger Tapping Test data. On Monday, I also got a hard drive containing MRI Scans. I spent most of the week working in FreeSurfer to begin analyzing those scans. FreeSurfer takes more than 6 hours to complete data analysis of a single scan, so it’s a long process. On Monday, I had set 5 scans to run overnight, but when I arrived on Tuesday, they had been canceled halfway through due to an error in the set up. It was difficult to figure out what I needed to change, especially since I’m not very experienced in computer technology. As a solution, I moved the files off the hard drive onto the desktop of the computer. When I came back Wednesday, all the scans were still running which is a great sign. On Wednesday, we then had another lab meeting, like that first week, where I got to present a slide explaining what I was working on. My coworker took time to meet with me later on and show me how to write a script that’ll automatically cycle through and process the data over the weekend, without my being present. On Thursday, when I came in, everything looked to be running smoothly. Chances are there’ll still be some to process when I come in Monday – it looks to be taking 11 hours per group of 3 – but I’ll be able to start analyzing the data. Over the week, I also solidified the layout of my poster and began working on the background information and method sections. The tough part about my project is that it’s difficult to establish a research question if I don’t have the data available for correlational studies, which I can’t do until FreeSurfer finishes pulling out my data. There’s also an unbelievable amount of data to look at, given that I’m running a 6-hour analysis for over 35 scans. 

Photo from the tournament

Over the weekend – in my time off from the lab – I was also able to join my volleyball team from back home at the National Volleyball Festival which happened to be going on at the Phoenix convention center, just 10 minutes from Barrow!! The coincidence is insane and I’m extremely grateful it worked out so perfectly that I even got to play with them on my days off! It was so amazing to be able to join the girls for what will have been my last ever Club Volleyball tournament, since I graduate next year. My little sister is on my team as well, so my family came into town and I got to see all of them. It was very meaningful and an emotional journey. I’m so proud of our growth as a team and in our play. There’s only a week and a half left of my internship, so I’m going to continue to take full advantage of every minute! See y’all next week!