Just The Beginning of My TRIP! by Amira Phillips

Hello! My name is Amira Phillips and I will be a junior this upcoming school year. I attend Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School. I have many different interests. The one that has been the most fun and interesting is my SERIOUS love for the field of medicine. I have always wanted to be a doctor or a surgeon of some type.  If you were to ask me, I consider myself a very eager person. I always want to learn something new or to add something different to my background. Part of how I ended up here at TRIP 2019 is my eagerness for science and my drive for success. I take a few weeks of each school year to research and apply to summer programs to challenge me and keep me busy.  My summer programs are very important to me, as I aspire to go to college and medical school in the near future and I feel that my participation in summer programs makes me more interesting to colleges (when that time approaches).

I have just completed my first week at TRIP and so far I like it. I really like the morning part before the overlap which is where we do most of the lab work and research. My initial experiment that I have been assigned is “How does Ginkgo Biloba and head trauma affect adult locomotion?” I find this type of research very intriguing because I am interested in neuroscience and how the mind develops and responds to the environment, especially as we age.  If you would have asked me a few years ago what would I be doing with my high school summers I wouldn't have thought about science summer programs.