I had my first mentor visit over zoom on Tuesday last week with Dr. Kaur! It was so exciting getting to learn about what she does in hematology. I discussed my final product idea with my mentor, and we decided that it was a good idea to continue doing research on how scientific experiments are evaluated. I will also be picking one or two conditions to research the prevention aspects of, because I learned that it would be too broad and difficult to generalize some of the topics. During the mentor visit, Dr. Kaur described in lots of detail how hematologic conditions develop, and how they are treated. She also told me that pubmed.org has a lot of good articles to read about to further understand some of the diseases if I wanted to look for more specific information. We agreed that on the next mentor visit, I could show her what I learned from reading articles, and then I would also pick one or two conditions to research specifically. I have a few in mind, such as Acute Myeloid leukemia, Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, or multiple myeloma, which my mentor specializes in treating. In my Final Product, I have had progress in doing research on hematologic conditions, reviewing a case study, and also checking out different scientific experiments and even drug trials to see how I need to format my mock science experiment. My mentor discussed chart reviews with me, which is what a lot of doctors look over when they are researching or diagnosing a condition. I also wrote rough drafts of some of my parts of the final product, such as the Introduction and Abstract. My mentor agreed that after doing these steps and learning more, I would learn how to format a hypothesis and create a specific research question. I read articles in Pubmed over the Spring Break, and I learned a lot more information that way. I still have much to learn but I am confident that I will be able to successfully do this project with the help of my mentors.
- akshayalalithas