The last semester of Under-graduation. Reality checks. Future plans. Tear-filled goodbyes. Interviews. And above all, the final thesis and dissertation work which counts for a lot on the grade card. Most of the students carry out their projects in their university under one of their professors. But some go out; be it in private enterprises or government labs or such. Everyone has their own mental image of what they want to work on or whom with or how. That is the beauty of science, to root itself into even the most disinterested of minds and nag at it to do something.
I too wanted to do my project in a big fancy lab abroad through a student exchange program, but it was not to be. I had gotten myself into a bit of situation, neglecting my studies in the previous semesters and had to now remedy it. I was worried as to how I'd be able to do a good project if I was saddled with other subjects, and under which professor. And then my friends suggested we talk to their Molecular Biology professor whom they highly exalted, basing the manner of instruction they received from him. He was everything my friends had made him out to be, an intelligent man who was willing to let us work on our idea as long as we did gave our sincere effort. And he introduced us to his two PhD students who'd be overseeing us. They in all actuality were the reason our project came out as well as it did.
I had always been a fan of the Scientific American magazine, thanks to my science savvy father. I'd done more than a few assignments using the information from those magazines. When our guide asked us to come up with topics we'd like to work on, I looked to Sci-Am again and it did not disappoint. Out of the three topics I'd chosen, two were from the magazine and one was my own. Our supervisor made out the one I had come up with to be the most appropriate and useful one to our educational level and technological availability. And we were given a month's time to study before the work started.
That was the first time I'd ever worked on my own idea and was both excited and scared at the same time. But my best friend who was working on a different project was in the same lab and I was a little at ease thanks to him. We started at the basics, sub-culturing the micro organism which we'd use, from its parent culture. I almost got the parent culture contaminated. "On the first day itself? Oh, come on!" I was always a bit of a klutz but this was too much to take even for me. Luckily the PhD students who were overseeing us made sure the situation did not go out of hand and everything came down to normal. I'd begun thinking, "If I can't even handle something like streaking a parent culture, do I really belong in this field?" It was probably a bit of an over reaction but I'd always prided myself in my ability to think, reason and carry out things that were expected of me well. I talked about my conundrum to the PhD students overseeing us, and they said just one thing which I relate to even today; "Everyone makes mistakes. If mistakes weren't around, how'd you know what not to do?"
Determined to make a wonder out of my research idea, I kept working hard. The PhD students were always around help us out, no matter how banal our doubts or how stupid our mistakes. I look up to them to even today, wondering how they could stand someone who had doubts about every teeny tiny detail, literally. This project also gave me something else; someone, rather. I made a friend out of another student of my degree, also working under the same professor as me. And if I may say so, this person has changed me a lot. Both as a student and a person, I learnt so much from my new friend. I finally knew how to make friends and on a seriously corny note, I could use some. I had quite a few friends by the time I left undergrad as opposed to how I'd spent 3 out of the 4 years mostly alone and on my computer.
I kept pushing my research forward, no matter how many times I failed. The PhD students too appreciated my efforts, realizing I was just a not so intelligent kid, trying hard to make up for his intellectual shortcomings with effort. And I finally hit my target. My professor from whom we'd had to get our reports checked before submitting appreciated my work. My results were actually validated! I was on cloud 9! Sir and the PhD students were the brains behind my wonderful thesis for most parts but I can proudly claim that the very first research idea I developed was, if I may say so 'A grand success', given the scale on which it was performed and with the objectives we'd hoped to achieve, nonetheless.
This period of time taught me something; If you don't dare to make mistakes, be it knowingly or otherwise, it means you don't care enough to learn. And I personally benefited quite a lot from this piece of wisdom. I haven't been one to listen to advice from others. I do things my own way. I make mistakes. I fall flat on my face. And I learn. And I never make the same mistake twice. I never have and thanks to my friends and peers, hopefully never will. Finally, I say this "Science isn't made by the one right answer, but rather the forty one wrong ones". Work, work till you get your results. Or your mistakes are good enough to be learnt from by those around and you.
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