MCGC Laboratory
Just a quick post for this week since I haven’t mentored recently (my mentor is on vacation). This past Thursday, I was identified as a Student of the Month at my high school for “pressing pause and demonstrating compassion.” I was nominated by a classmate of mine as well as one of my teachers, and was one of around fifteen students in attendance of a breakfast to recognize us. At the breakfast, we listened to one of Darby’s business teachers, Mr. Evan Bell, speak about what it means to be compassionate. Additionally, he walked us through how Southwest Airlines conducts a group interview, in which a few candidates tell their most embarrassing stories and the interviewers watch the faces of the other candidates to see if they are relating to and sympathizing with the candidate speaking. Those who showed signs of compassion were selected to move on to the next round of the hiring process, and those who did not appear to connect with the speaker were sent home. Mr. Bell emphasized how more and more companies are hiring people based on their personality rather than their abilities. He told us, “companies hire for attitude, train for skill,” meaning that the skills required for a job can be taught, but emotions cannot. This just serves as a reminder for all of us that no matter where we work, or what path we take, we must continue to be compassionate, as that is something that will go further than simply being able to complete a task.
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Along with our personal mission statements, we have been talking about life planning in class, and forming our own life management plans. There were eight different areas to our life plans: personal development, wellness, interpersonal relationships, family, education, career, community and leadership involvement, and financial goals. It was difficult to set different goals in this many areas, as I had thought about the future before, but never in so many aspects at the same time. For example, I had thought about what type of job I had wanted and the finances that would be involved, but I never connected those to how they might affect my relationships with my family and friends. The most challenging goal for me to set was my personal development goal. Being the perfectionist that I am, I always see room for improvement, but it was hard to choose what I wanted to focus on the most. I could always work on my time management skills, or becoming more resilient when I stumble upon obstacles in my path. Eventually, I decided on wanting to travel to Italy, as my family is Italian and I have always wanted to learn more about different cultures outside of America. One goal that will be the most beneficial for me is my wellness goal, in which I made a plan to get 8 hours of sleep each night. Currently, on the rare occasion that I do get enough sleep, it is easier for me to focus, I am much more productive, and overall I have a more positive mindset throughout the day. Working towards this goal will also be helping me reach each of the other goals I have set for myself. All in all, creating a life plan for myself has helped me gain a better vision of what I want my future to look like, and when I can see my future, I find it that much easier to work to make it a reality. This week in class, we have been learning about personal mission statements, and working on our own. A personal mission statement is one sentence that is unique for each individual to help guide them when making decisions that impact their future. The first step to writing a personal mission statement was make a list of what is important to you. My top 5 things that I came up with are family, friends, health, safety, and happiness. The second step is to envision where you want to go. I answered this in a couple of different ways. One thing I wrote was that I wanted to take a trip to Italy, but I also included that I want to work in a hospital lab and live with my future family. The third step is to describe what the best version of yourself looks like. I want to love waking up in the morning, and never dread going to work each day. I want to worry less and lift up everyone around me. I want to take care of myself, specifically get enough sleep each night, and I hope to never have to worry about having enough money for the important things. The fourth step is identifying how you want others to see you. Some of the characteristics I listed were caring, passionate, responsible, and confident. The fifth step is to figure out what you want your legacy to be and how you want to impact others. For me, I want my impact to be encouraging everyone to be themselves and be their best self, no matter what others around them think. So, after all of that, the personal mission statement that I have come up with is this: “to be a superhero to everyone around me.” This is kind of a joke, because I am a huge Marvel fan, but there is real meaning to it. It’s not because I plan on falling into a vat of toxic waste and gaining unnatural abilities, but because a superhero is someone that others can depend on. They also encourage others to be the best version of themselves. They never hesitate to do the right thing, and they keep a positive mindset despite any obstacles that come their way. That’s the kind of person I want to be. My first official day mentoring, which was almost two weeks ago, consisted of me reading a binder that probably weighed as much as I do on safety in the lab. That was pretty boring, but at least it’s done and out of the way. On my second day, I got to sit in on an interview for someone applying to work in the lab. I found it beneficial for me to see what an interview for this kind of job would look like without having the pressure of being interviewed, as all I did was observe. Since then, I have been learning how to prepare and stain a peripheral blood smear for examination and to do a white blood cell (WBC) differential. I prepared the blood smear by creating a wedge smear, in which a drop of blood is placed on the surface of one slide and the edge of another slide is used to smear the blood drop. Next, I stained the blood smears three different ways. The first was a neat stain, or a manual stain, where I dipped the slides in three different solutions and rinsed them off before allowing them to dry. The second was by using a QuickSlide Plus II automated slide stainer, and the third was by using a Sysmex analyzer to stain the slides for me. When I finished preparing the blood smears, I did a manual differential on each of them, which essentially means using a microscope to find and classify one hundred white blood cells from the blood smear. I learned how to identify five types of cells found in a normal WBC differential, including neutrophils (segmented and bands), lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils. I also learned what a normal WBC differential would look like, as well as what would not be normal for a WBC differential. After doing differentials manually, I got to see how a CellaVision analyzer can be used to do a differential by taking pictures of each WBC that it finds and sorting them into categories based on what type of cell it thinks it is. The pictures are displayed on a computer monitor, so unlike a microscope, multiple people can be looking at the same cells at the same time. This was helpful for me as I could try to sort the cells myself and then receive feedback on how to better identify each type of WBC. I’ve only been in the lab for two weeks, but I’m really enjoying what I’m learning, and I’m eager to learn about the other areas of the lab and to have this kind of experience before I even graduate high school. |
AuthorA high school senior exploring the field of medical laboratory science. Archives
April 2019
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