Sometime in November, I attended the life science research night that was in the life science research institute. I went into an info session about applying to graduate schools as well as an introduction to drug development. At the very end, I wandered around through different posters. It was interesting how my experience was different from when I attended this event in my second year. In my second year, I wasn’t able to follow through most of the posters and was unfamiliar with the terminology that presenters were using. This time, I had a much better understanding of what the presenters are talking about. For example – about integrins, about histone modification, about DNA methylation, about cancer metastasis etc. The one that stood out to me the most was ” Identification of Novel Lung Cancer Drivers from a Sleeping Beauty Mutagenesis Screen”. It was related to identifying cancer-promoting genes and studying the function of those genes. I had the chance to ask the presenter how she came to work on this project. She talked about her co-op experience in the lab and how she decided to continue working on the project in grad school. It was interesting how long a project takes. She said that the project started before she was doing co-op then there was no progress for almost a year (although there was ongoing effort) and then they finally got some results that work to allow them to progress further. –> I think this can be an example of persistence? (kind of related to self-regulated learning)