Eleazar’s TRIP Experience by Eleazar Annamdevula

Summer TRIP was definitely a wonderful experience for me. Dr. Austria, the people at Fox Chase as well as my peers were all genial. Overall, I think that the program is quite well structured; however, I think that it’d be better to have more lab time. Obviously, a two-hour lunch is nice, but we could’ve done more in that extra time. I think that the assays were quite well designed and weren’t that challenging. Dr. Austria, Hannah, and Sabina all did a great job explaining and demonstrating all the assays to us. To me, the career talks were quite enjoyable, but they definitely need to be shorter. After a while it just seems like the speaker is just droning on and on about their life and I stopped listening. I think that Dr. Rall’s talk resonated with me the most since he touched on failure in the lab and went in depth about how it is okay to fail. Personally, I enjoyed getting to learn about Drosophila and its anatomy, as well as doing the actual assays the most enjoyable. The hands-on aspect of this program was definitely one of the main reasons why I applied, and getting to be in a proper lab and work with an actual specimen was extremely enjoyable. Even though it was messy, I did actually enjoy making the fly food. Me and my peer, Aniketh, figured it out together and I thought it was quite therapeutic. My interest in science and research was deepened during this program, and I feel like I belong in the STEM field after participating in Summer TRIP. Thank you for everything!

---