I’ve spent several summers at the Brickner Microbiology Lab at Northwestern University. I first became involved with the lab the summer after my sophomore year of highschool. I worked as a paid lab technician. I preformed custodial duties and learned how to operate and maintain pieces of lab equipment. During this time I sat in on “Journal Club” paper review sessions and learned about the research projects running at the lab. The following year I worked as an unpaid intern position. I completed projects assigned to me by Prof. Brickner, and aided graduate students with their research. These tasks ranged from creating a digital protein database to performing gene transformations. I worked approximately twenty to forty hours a week and about