Hi everyone. I would really appreciate it if you could look over my essay for Cornell and provide some feedback. Any comments are appreciated, and if you need someone to look over your essay, I would be happy to do so!
Prompt: How have your interests and related experiences influenced the major you have selected in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences?
I ignored the ache in my wrist as I clicked on each cell position on the screen. My eyes were blurry and the highlighted cells began to blend into a cacophony of colors. After spending hours upon days in the computer room, my posture was starting to resemble Quasimodo's. I stretched my arms and stifled a yawn as I plodded through the work. I tracked cell after cell and recorded each cell's position for each frame.
That was my first experience in laboratory research. No, it didn't quite meet my initial expectations of the work; as much as I hate to admit it, I had imagined myself wearing a spotless, white lab coat, pouring solutions from beaker to test tube, and discovering the cure for cancer. I worked at Columbia University Medical Center under the mentorship of Dr. Canoll during the summer before my junior year and completed a research project during my six weeks at the center. My experiment focused on the effectiveness of a potential therapeutic drug on glioblastoma, a common primary brain tumor, and a major component of the experiment was using a cell tracking software called Metamorph, the aforementioned program responsible for my hunched shoulders and cramped wrist. One of my roles in the experiment was tracking the progression of cell movement before and after the drug administration. And even though the work was tedious and repetitive, the final results were truly worth it. My experiment showed that the drug did slow down tumor cell progression, indicating its prospective use in further research in brain cancer.
*(Some sort of break here?)*
I held my breath as Dr. Roy pulled out the tray of cells from the incubator. The media was cloudy, and my heart sank. "Contaminated," he said, affirming my fears. This was my fourth experimental set-up and it was ruined, just like the previous trials. I rinsed out the cells, and tossed the used Petri dishes into the red biohazard bag. I sighed and took off my lab coat as I headed to write in my lab notebook that my experiment had failed yet again.
The next summer, I worked at the NYU Environmental Health Studies Center throughout the summer, studying the effects of gutkha, a smokeless tobacco which is marketed as a safe alternative to cigarettes, on mammalian cells. My experiment centered on a toxicity test. Unfortunately, the cells became contaminated every time I placed them in the incubator (later, I realized that the incubator was malfunctioning). On my fifth try, the toxicity test finally worked--the cells were not contaminated! However, I had been hoping for a survivorship curve; instead, all of the cells were dead except the control cells. What could this mean?
My experiment showed that gutkha is toxic to mammalian cells, even at very low doses, making it no safer than cigarettes. While preliminary, my results could help warn those who use gutkha. Although these were not the expected results, I was able to discover something important; like many other experiments, my results were a happy accident.
Cornell University offers a variety of courses, and its seven different schools represent how diverse the studies are. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences offers many undergraduate research opportunities, and my laboratory experiences, which have certainly been both challenging and gratifying, have shaped my interest in biological sciences and research. The exposure I received in laboratory research, as well as my experience with my grandmother, who has Alzheimer's disease, has motivated me to continue my pursuit of knowledge of biology and related sciences, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences would be an excellent college for me to continue my cultivation of interest in biology.
On a side note, the word count is 613, and the limit is 650. Once again, many thanks to anyone who comments!
