Chloe Park, CBC Undergraduate in Glasgow!

I was incredibly lucky to have been selected as one of the four BRAVO! students this summer.

Never in my life had I imagined that setting foot in Europe during my college years would be possible, especially with my financial situation. However, BRAVO! made this dream come true.

The experience felt surreal throughout the entire three months as I worked in a different environment surrounded by the lovely yet hard-to-understand Glaswegian accents. I watched the Scottish Premier League in person, took a weekend trip down to London, and even to this moment, these memories feel like a dream.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to learn various lab techniques including super-resolution microscopy, and how to think like a scientist. Since I flew all the way to Glasgow with my own project, hoping to contribute something new to my lab, I held a sense of greater responsibility and learned how to come up with my own troubleshooting ideas when experiments did not proceed as expected.

However, science was not the only part of this valuable experience. Beyond academics and science, BRAVO! allowed me to grow personally. For the past three years, I was constantly running at full speed towards my goals without giving myself time for introspection. BRAVO! gave me the chance to take a step back, reflect on myself, and now I feel fully recharged to return and work towards my goals once again.

Moreover, I met the most incredible group of people in the Sheiner lab. They are not just my coworkers and mentors but have become my best friends. They are the most brilliant, caring, hardworking, and funny people I have ever met. They knew how to make the work environment both productive and enjoyable at the same time. I had the opportunity to hear honest opinions about my future plans from those who had gone through similar thought processes.

I will never be able to forget the summer of 2023.