Discovering a Passion for Research

My best experience at Whittier College was working on my research project for my immunology course.

My project was about determining how echinacea tea affects the immune system. A lot of people rely on tea to help recover from a cold or flu, so I wanted to determine if drinking this tea would strengthen our immune system or weaken it. Along the way, I gained so much confidence in my lab skills and a solid foundation for doing what I love: helping other people.

At first, I remember being terrified of working with cells because they require so much care and I didn’t want to make a mistake. When working with cells, I had to be careful about contamination. It was a lengthy process, but it got easier by the day. When I first started, it would take me about an hour and a half to count my cells, create new flasks with old cells, and new environments for them (called media). Towards the end, I could do this in 20 to 30 minutes and I was confident in my work. I went from having self-doubt every time I went to open the incubator and placed my flask of cells under the microscope to being confident enough to determine the health of my cells by the color of their media.

There was not a day where my biggest fear was contamination, but there also wasn’t one day where I didn’t feel relaxed and at peace while working on my research. Imagine this: it is 6 p.m. and there is no one in the tissue culture room with you. It is just you, your favorite jams, and your cells. It was moments like these that made me fall in love with research.

I started off the course with very little knowledge of how research was done. I had no idea what a cell counter was, how to take care of cells, how to feed them, and how to work with them in general. I learned all of this in the process, but it was worth it thanks to Prof. Lopez-Vetrone. She invested her time and resources on her students to help build up our skills and teach us new techniques. She was always there to encourage my peers. She also helped me analyze my results. If it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the research opportunity that she gave us.

I never really thought about doing research as a profession, but this project made me look at research from a different perspective. I will admit, I was disappointed at first when I wasn’t getting the results I wanted, but that is the beauty of research. Research teaches you new things. I was hoping that echinacea tea would strengthen the immune system, but my project indicates that large doses of it actually weaken it.

I learned something new and something that will help people in the future. That is what I want to do. I want to help people and research is just one of the many ways you can do it. This project gave me confidence in myself and it taught me to trust the process. I hope to one day work in a hospital. I am still unsure of what profession I would like to obtain, but I think research is a pretty awesome choice.