The Series Finale.

I am currently sitting in the full sized bed in the small room in the wonderful apartment in which I have lived for the past two months. I have to be out of it by tomorrow at 11am, so I'm trying to gather my thoughts and reflect a little bit.

Everything is blank and practically empty in this room; just how I found it. No longer does the Palmetto flag hang to my left, nor is my desk adorned with pictures of friends and loved ones. When I leave Village East tomorrow morning, it will be as if I was never here.

Oh, but I was here. Even though it may seem like a dream to me, and even though I may still not believe that I have had this opportunity, I have indeed completed my first research internship. It has been absolutely amazing; but before I go into my "wrap-up" blog post. Let me tell you about the past two weeks.

Everything was hell. Hell, hell, HELL. These past two weeks have been some of the most "on edge" times I have experienced in a long while. I'm sure that I put much of the pressure on myself, but I also felt like a complete moron when I was trying to put together my research poster to present this past Wednesday.

Here's a little time frame: I would have really liked to get my poster done on the 21st, so that I could email it to the printer and have it done at the Medical Campus (their printer is nicer). I was flying out to Pensacola for a wedding on the 22nd, and would not be back in town until the evening of the 24th. The printer at the Medical Campus needed the Powerpoint slide of my poster by the 23rd. Basically, I needed to have my poster completely done by the 21st.

We had a program meeting on the 21st at the Medical Campus, and I usually don't go back to the Lab (different campus) after the meetings. However, I knew I really needed to get work done, so I headed back. Good thing I did.

I had already submitted a draft to my mentor for her to review. I thought it was pretty good, and that at most, she would have some slight formatting changes to make. And THAT would be no big deal to change, right?

Hell. To. The. NO. As I'm sitting at the desk doing some minor, yet tedious changes to my graphs, I receive a HUGE email from my mentor. As soon as I noticed that it had 9 bullet points, I knew it could not be good. My heart sank to the basement. The first point was the killer though; basically, I had entered the data in the Excel sheet incorrectly, which means that every single one of my graphs was incorrect. As I continued to read on, my heart and my pride were beaten into submission by the way the email was worded. It was just very blunt, and I do not take academic criticism well at all.

I haven't been that close to crying about something academia related since I almost got a B+ in Latin in like 9th grade. Or that time I missed a stupid word in the ACSI Spelling Bee. . . Anyway, I seriously was about to hyperventilate, cry, or go into convulsions. I felt like a complete moron. Then I got angry at my mentor. And then I went to my graduate student with a "b-b-but you don't understand" look on my face.

But he did understand. I was visibly shaken, and I'm sure he could tell. He reassured me that my mentor is just not very "warm," and that it's nothing personal. He asked me if I was ok, and I said "uh-huh." It was sad. I felt like I was five. I think I was even more upset because I knew there was no way out. I had to sit there and do those damn graphs over again.

Three hours later, I left Head Lab and with it my intellectual dignity, for the day. The graphs were done, and even though they still needed to be formatted (my graduate student said he would do that for me), I could at least take a good step back and work on the changes my mentor suggested one at a time.

^^ THIS is what research is like. If you are thinking about doing research, please be aware that it is frustrating. It will make you want to stick your foot through the computer screen. I was incredibly angry, sad, upset. . . basically rampant with every negative emotion in the book. Why? Because I take great pride in academic work that I do and this was a glitch in my plan. However, looking back (and hindsight is 20/20), I am so happy that this happened because it gave me a taste of the reality of conducting research and doing good science. Am I willing to make mistakes and correct them? Or will I just sit there and anxiously whine? Perseverence is the key in any field of research.

8 painstaking revisions and countless back-and-forth emails/conversations with my mentor later, I finally printed my poster in the bottom of the Psychology building (on regular paper). Feelings attached to a "job well done" doesn't even cut it. I was grinning ear to ear as that 42x70" poster finally was done printing.

The poster session the next day went exceedingly well. I know much more about spatial navigation than I would ever think to give myself credit for. In fact, I found out the next day that my mentor went back to the lab (I wasn't there) and was bragging on how good of a job I did at my first poster session ever! :) And I thought she hated me. . . She even brought in cheesecake the next day, congratulated me, told me to keep in touch and to contact her if I ever need a positive letter of recommendation. CLUTCH.

Then today I went in to say my final goodbyes to the Head Lab crew. They bought me a pound of coffee from a local coffee shop as a going away gift :)

I will miss Head Lab.