Rising to a challenge isn’t easy. It requires you to buckle down, do the hard work, and persevere. And at the end of it all? You end up growing exponentially because you stretched the limits of your ability. We all have times in our lives where we encounter something new—sometimes expected, other times blindsiding you. What matters is how you tackle the challenge. This week, we’re looking at how Carmen Vernon persevered through a tough internship. She wanted to quit many times along the way, but she stuck it out and learned a thing or two along the way.
When I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. Throughout my K-12 academic life, I was a straight A student, but I thought I particularly excelled at science.
Physics? Loved all the math equations we had to learn.
Chemistry? Swooned over the periodic table.
Biology? Enjoyed the textbook thoroughly--especially the evolution bit.
During junior year, I heard of an opportunity with an Indianapolis high school summer research program. The program was designed for high school students to experience hands-on science in a university or industry environment. I was placed in a cancer research lab at the Methodist Research Institute. Under the supervision of the lead researcher and several post-doctoral fellows, I looked at how mushroom extracts affected MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells.
Amazing experience for a 17-year-old, right?
Absolutely! But . . . there were several bumps along the way, and not just because I found out I didn’t like science quite as much as I thought I did. Here’s just a few of the things that caused me to have a less than stellar summer:
I had a supervisor who refused to encourage me or commend my hard work.
I had a post-doctoral fellow who blamed me for failed experiments (we later learned at the end of the 8 week internship that he had given me the wrong instructions to carry out the tasks).
I never gained the trust of the staff in my lab. They often tried to keep my past my designated hours, arguing with me every Tuesday when I needed to “leave early” to attend a meeting at 3:00 p.m. with my full summer internship cohort. And if I ended my assignments early, I still had to stay until 5:00 p.m., sitting there, in the windowless lab, unpaid.
Enough of the trial and tribulation, though. While I wanted to quit, I am more proud that I stuck it out for the two months because it allowed me to grow and learn that I didn’t like science as much as I thought I did.
I rose to the challenge to learn three important lessons in particular: how to deal with bad bosses, how to defend my own work, and how to make sure my voice is heard.
Dealing with Bad Bosses
Rising to the challenge of a bad boss is tough. You’re bound to have one or two (or more) in your career. I was lucky to have 4 internships between college and post-undergrad. Out of those four internships, I only had one bad boss, and it happened to coincide with this research internship.
My advice? Go above your boss if you can, or around. I asked the program coordinator of the research program how I was doing, and he had more positive remarks. The lead researcher in my lab didn’t know how to manage high schoolers (both the ability level and the academic level) meanwhile the program coordinator was a seasoned high school science teacher who knew what was feasible. His more positive remarks didn’t improve my day-to-day, but they gave me a better idea of how I was fairing, so that I knew how to talk about the experience in future interviews.
My other piece of advice? Get out. I had an expiration date at the end of summer. Most people with bad bosses don’t have this luxury, so look for other opportunities if going above your boss doesn’t yield results.
Defending Your Work
Throughout the summer, I was not getting the results they expected from my cell cultures or western blots. They kept telling me I wasn’t careful enough, detail oriented enough, or thorough enough in my experiments. Week 6 of the internship they decided to shadow me. . . they found out I was doing nothing wrong and were baffled that I was getting the results I did. Came to find out that the particular protein we were looking for was only found in the wall of cells, so we needed a special enzyme to break down the cell.
My advice? Stick to your guns. Always welcome feedback, but don’t be so malleable that you lose your sense of self, sense of work ethic, or sense of pride. Sometimes there’s no way around hard feedback, and you have to incorporate the new direction, but other times there is a way to defend your work if you feel passionately with the direction it has already gone. In my /case, I felt certain that I was doing everything in my power to yield the best experiment results. By never backing down, they were forced to see my work for themselves and found out I wasn’t the problem, their experiment was the problem.
Ensuring Your Voice Is Heard
Last but not least. Make sure you are heard. It is easy for people to cross your boundaries at work. You often hear phrases similar to: “Don’t you want to help out the team? You’d be working more hours if you wanted to see us succeed.” Don’t fall for that! It’s your office trying to guilt you into skirting work-life balance. I had a similar situation in my first internship. They said I needed discipline and insisted I stay until 5:00 p.m. cleaning the lab (unpaid) even if I had all of my actual work for the day done.
My advice? Say something! People will keep pushing your boundaries unless you stand up for yourself. Using your voice is essential to all three of these challenges I’ve mentioned.
To rise to the challenge, you must first use your voice.
Has there been a time when you’ve risen to the challenge? Email us to submit your story idea!