This was MY project. I was allowed to make decisions and learn from my own mistakes. For someone who likes independence, this was the best learning experience I could have asked for.

[Are you satisfied with the progress of your project?]
Yes because I mostly had controlled the progress of it... I have learned so much from my project. I can’t think of any other way I could have learned this besides an actual job in this field.

I believe I made great progress this summer. Not [only] do I have
confidence to perform certain procedures (eg. RNA extraction), but I have the confidence to take initiative to design experiments to my answer my own questions and verify our results. I feel like a real contributor to the question we [were] answering in lab, and must say this is a tremendously satisfying feeling.

I'm more than satisfied with the progress of my research project because I actually learned a new respect for real science, where the experiment gives the answer and not the textbook. All my life as a teacher, we are taught to depend on the book for the answer, well real science dictates differently.

[Did you get sufficient guidance in your project? By whom?] Yes. By both my professor and the grad student I worked with ... the grad student especially is the guy who taught me how to be a graduate student.

I feel the critiques I received over the presentations I did here were the best I have ever received and have made me a 200% better presenter.