Setting the Course

If you asked me how I got in to cancer research, I would laugh and tell you that it was an accident. As a college freshman, I applied to work in three different labs, and a lab studying head and neck cancer was the only one that would interview me - at least I had an easy decision when that lab offered me a position. As for why I've stayed in cancer research - that is a much more interesting story.

The lab that I joined ended up being my research home all throughout undergrad. By my junior year, I was starting to look at graduate programs, and was considering options across many biomedical disciplines. Around the same time, my mentor encouraged me to apply for an award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). This particular award program funds undergrads to attend the AACR Annual Meeting (the biggest cancer meeting in the world) during their junior and senior years. Undergrads rarely, if ever, attend national meetings due to costs, and I normally would have been no exception. However, I was extremely fortunate to receive one of these awards, and was able to attend my first scientific meeting in 2005.

I went to the Annual Meeting with a lot of options on my mind for my research life after undergrad. After the meeting, there was no question whatsoever that I was going to continue on in cancer research. Even at my first meeting, I took home things that I now look forward to at meetings like our GRC - excitement for research, thirst for new knowledge, and a passion for improving the health of cancer patients. At the time, seeing things like this at the meeting inspired me to work in the field. Since then, I've recognized that lab research, quite frankly, is very hard. Much of what we do as scientists is failure - a failed experiment, a flawed hypothesis, a rejected grant - but the thrill that those few successes bring, and sharing that thrill with your colleagues, makes it more than worthwhile. I learned how important meetings are, not only to network and learn about new research, but also to get new perspectives, share your ideas with peers, and to re-energize yourself for the work to come.

The biggest takeaway I had from that first meeting was from a patient advocate that was introducing an award lecture. She thanked everyone for the hard work that we do in the lab - even as an undergrad, I beamed with pride at that, and that feeling has stayed with me since. Then she asked the attendees to repeat after her: "I can't do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that I can do." That quote, and her profound sincerity in saying it with us, has etched itself in to my research soul, and I try to live by it every day in the lab. You'll even find that quote on the dedication page of my graduate dissertation.

So much of a students' research training is in the lecture hall or at the bench, and for obvious reason. However, there is a lot to being a scientist that simply can't be learned in the lab, and filling those gaps is what scientific meetings and conferences accomplish. I might not be the scientist that I am today - I might not be dedicated to making the lives of cancer patients better - if not for that first travel grant ten years ago.