Questions and Answers by Kat Sliwa

When TRIP started, I was excited to do my own research project, but I had a few lingering fears. Would I be too terrified of the flies to actually work with them? Would I know what to do? Would I even like being in the lab? I discovered early on that fruit flies aren’t that scary, especially when they’re knocked out but my other questions, however, had slightly more complicated answers. 

For my independent project, I decided to study if ginger and short-term cold exposure could reduce pain in injured fruit flies. I would injure some flies, drug some with ginger, and expose some to cold immediately before running assays. I decided on the Negative Geotaxis assay to determine how well my flies were feeling overall and the Pain Sensitivity assay to measure how pain-sensitive my flies were.

​After planning my experiment with Dr. Leystra and some of my TRIP peers, I felt like I knew exactly what I was going to do. But when I sat down to write my weekly plan to start my experiment, I drew a blank. I didn’t know how to do any of the assays I wanted to do, how to make any of the drug stocks I would need, the exact method of cold exposure for my flies, or even how to injure my flies. Luckily, between the online resources provided by TRIP, help from Dr. Leystra, and thinking on the spot, I was able to work out all the details. I didn’t realize it going into TRIP, but being flexible and quickly adapting to necessary changes in my independent project were some of the most essential skills required for research that I learned. Not knowing what to do actually turned out to be a good thing; it really taught me to use my resources and quickly find solutions to problems I encountered.

As to whether or not I liked being in the lab, the answer is an absolute YES! I enjoyed lab work even more than I ever imagined. TRIP truly felt like a safe environment where I could learn, try, and fail amongst all my peers. Yes, sometimes it was hard; the math isn’t always the easiest, and sometimes things will go wrong, but that’s all ok. Struggles are always a part of TRIP and science in general. Overall, I feel like I have learned so much in just ten days, and I can’t believe TRIP is already over. And even though I’m sad my project is coming to a close, I’m excited to see what kind of research I will do in the future, thanks to my experience at TRIP.