Current Tufts student Marco Rodriguez shared the following about being a Research Intern at Harvard Medical School …
What did you do as an intern at this organization?
As an intern I did a lot of the surgery work in the lab. I was present for almost every surgery across all three projects that we are currently working on and also did a lot of the histology work. This mostly consisted of sectioning brains and putting them on slides to then be stained and mapped for damage.
How did you find this internship?
I simply googled many Neurosurgery research opportunities in the area and sent out a handful of emails to the ones that fascinated me most, and then went through the interview process and chose this one since It would give me more operating room experience than any other lab.
What did you enjoy most about your internship?
I really enjoyed the time in the OR. It was extremely high stress for our RO1 project, and I was responsible for some vital parts of the surgery very early in my internship.
What did you find challenging?
The most challenging part of the internship was honestly organization, we are a very young lab and being the most senior intern I was somewhat of a middle man between the full employees and the undergraduate interns. This meant that I had to organize what multiple other interns were doing each week occasionally to make sure that we were staying on schedule for surgery prep, for histology work and for EEG analysis.
What advice would you offer to someone who wants to make the most of an internship like yours?
Pay attention when you are learning a new task. If you are constantly asking employees what to do you are slowing your work and theirs, and when you show that you are competent in a basic task you are more likely to be given important more exciting tasks.
