It's been about three weeks since I finished my lab. Within that time, I visited colleges, went to Chicago for my grandfather's 90th birthday, and then came back home and slept and did school work/college apps.
To sum up my experience in the lab in a couple words: "Extremely challenging, but interesting and rewarding". Everything from learning MATLAB to my PI Mike challenging me to think like a graduate student was difficult. But as I got more and more into the rhythm of my open-ended research, I started to slowly conquer these challenges.
I presented to my lab members on my last day at the weekly lab meeting. There was about 15 people attending my presentation, most of them post-docs. I was expecting my presentation to be no more than 10 minutes, but my 8 slide presentation ended up being 45 minutes long. This occurred because many of the lab members (mostly post-docs) were constantly asking me questions and seemed genuinely interested in my research. This made me happy but I also had be very focused and calm during my presentation. In the end it was a a great success (exceeding even my own expectations). Mike (PI) was going to bring everyone out to dinner to celebrate me leaving the lab (as he does with everyone) but he had to catch a flight to visit an ill family member. But nonetheless, my last day ended strongly and I'm glad I got this experience over the summer.
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