Z WEP Archives – Page 217 – CA Work Experience Program

Day 3

My third day at the clinic was… pretty sad. Remember the patient I talked about from my first day, AR? Well her results from pathology came back. The results indicated that a small mass found in her breast (which doctors initially thought had been from a trauma), was actually cancer. Not only that, but the bone marrow biopsy (which I witnessed on my first day), indicated that the same kind of cancer was found on her bones. Dr. Graham and Mrs. Blumenthal explained to me that this actually wasn’t bone cancer; rather, the cancer found in AR’s breast had spread down to that area, making the cancer metastatic (or able to spread). I had no idea that a cancer found in her breast could travel down to her bones especially when the mass was so small. In fact, it was so small that doctors couldn’t spot it the first time they reviewed it. Anyways, with the confirmation that AR did in fact have cancer, I sat in on the meeting where Mrs. Blumenthal explained to her and her partner what the situation was. It was truly disheartening to see her attitude change the second she heard the word “cancer.” However, Mrs. Blumenthal explained to AR the same thing she explained to me on my first day at the clinic: when patients hear the word “cancer,” their first thought is that they are going to die. That’s a horrible mindset to be in; while cancer is a really serious disease (no matter where it’s found), most kinds are treatable and have great survival rates. The second Mrs. Blumenthal told AR that her kind of cancer was treatable, AR was relieved. However, we would only know the severity of the treatment after further scans.

After the session with RA, Dr. Graham had introduced me to other patients dealing with breast, lung, and prostate cancer. He also told me that next week he was going to be a part of a conference at REX hospital to converse about RA’s cancer and he wanted me to join him! I was incredibly excited when he told me that I would get to be a part of a real medical conference and I cannot wait to participate!

Day 2

Today was quite different from my first day working at Waverly Hematology Oncology. Instead of starting my day with patients, I was able to shadow the pharmacy technician, Emily. It was extremely interesting to watch Emily because her job was to mix individualized medicinal solutions for different patients depending on how severe the patients’ diseases were. Through her mixing process, she walked me through step by step the mathematics that went behind calculating how much of each substance was used. It was also helpful to hear about her pharmacy technician school process (how long it was and what kinds of things she learned.

Working with Emily on the medicinal solutions didn’t take all day; in fact, during the afternoon, I worked with Dr. Graham (the head of the clinic) as he met with the rest of his patients. I was introduced to GR who was in her late 30’s. It was unfortunate that she had breast cancer as she was very young. I sat in on Dr. Graham explaining to her the pros and cons of getting a lumpectomy versus a mastectomy. I could tell that GR was getting rather emotional (as expected) while Dr. Graham was talking, but she felt much better knowing that she was working with an expert like him. He made a list for her to take home which explained that through a lumpectomy, GR would be able to keep her “God-given anatomy.” However, the downside to that process would result in a 1 in 7 chance of the cancer reoccurring. In the case of the other process, the mastectomy, she would lose this “God-given anatomy” but the risk of her cancer reoccurring would be 1 in 40. While most come to the conclusion that you would want to pick the path that yields the best security, Dr. Graham explained to me that this is a patient’s life we are talking about and we can’t make assumptions as to what their best interest is.

Overall, my second day at Waverly Oncology was just as interesting as my first. I was able to experience a new outlook of medicine which I now have more interest in (in terms of professions) and I was able to continue my patient-interactions which I enjoy.

Day 3 at Osceola Studios

“Sometimes Things Get Boring”

This was the gentle advice that Mr. Hodgin gave the other intern and me after a three hour (or three year?) long session with a pianist. The pianist came in and recorded three songs, which were all eerie, atmospheric, soundscape kind of songs that followed classical music patterns and keys. It was the type of music you’d expect to hear in the background of a medieval role-playing video game.

Mr. Hodgin, who (like us interns), is a fan of hip hop, rock, and anything with some energy to it, revealed to us after the pianist left that he was bored out of his mind. But he sat us down and explained to us that this is part of his job. While the experience might have been dull to us, the pianist was loving it. So, as the engineer, Mr. Hodgin has to find a way to get as “into it” as the artist is. He warned us that sometimes this is a lot easier said than done, remembering how easily entertained we were by the youthful rapper from wednesday.

Day 2-RTI

My second day at RTI gave me more of a taste of what a real world job in chemistry is like, rather than just the introduction from the first day. In the morning, I sat in on a conference call with Dr. Rothrock. Some of her team was in Washington DC, and experts and leaders in HIV prevention from NIH, USAID, the Gates Foundation and more participated in the conference call. After some initial struggles with technology, we listened to Dr. Rothrock’s core team that is working on HiP, the HIV prevention implant for women in Africa describe their progress in the last year. There were several tasks, with a different team working on each. The first task was finding an effective drug to put inside the delivery device. There have been many HIV prevention medications already developed that are incredibly effective, but some have properties that make them difficult to use in an implant, such as their solubility in water. The second task was to perform animal studies using the implant, which is an ongoing process. We learned that although the studies started in rats, they have moved to using large rabbits, as they can test their blood more often for concentrations of the drugs. The final task that we learned about was the clinical studies. As there is a lot of stigma around taking pills or any HIV prevention medication in many villages in Africa, it is important for researchers to figure out what women will actually use, as the efficacy of the medication and device are irrelevant if they are not being used. One concern expressed by women in villages that surprised everyone on the team was the fear about “thugs” taking the devices from their arm, or wherever they are implanted. Many women shared stories they had heard about devices being ripped from women’s arms, and the thugs would try to smoke them, as they thought it contained traditional “drugs”. There were surveys conducted to the women about the length of time the device would last, biodegradable vs. removable, and flexibility to determine what would be the most popular in villages.

In the afternoon, Kiera and I observed some lab work that was directly related to the HiP project. It was really cool to see the intersection between the business side of science that we had seen in the morning, and the bench science that made the business possible. We watched a biochemist, Dr. Natalie Giourard, measure the concentrations of the drug in viles, which was done to mimic the simultaneous animal study, so that the scientists could predict what they would see in the blood tests of the rabbits. While it sounded simple to record concentrations of just 22 test tube samples, it was quite a tedious process. The devices, which are made out of either polymer film or an extruded polymer tube and filled with either sesame or canola oil, have a semi-permeable membrane that is supposed to release controlled, linear amounts of the drug over time and must be kept sterile. Working under a sterile hood and with disinfected gloves, Dr. Giourard pipetted a fresh salt solution made to mimic the body into 22 new test tubes, and transferred the device from their current test tubes to the fresh ones. She then used a spectrometer to measure the concentrations in each previous vile. Overall, the second day was less interesting than the first, but it was really neat to experience what an actual chemistry job is like on a daily basis.

Wednesday (Day 2)

Last night, NCFC of the NASL (North American Soccer League) played the Charlotte Independence of the USL (United Soccer League) in The US Open Cup. The NASL is the established second division in the US, and though the USL is not technically recognized as lower than the NASL, it is generally understood that the USL is the third division of US Soccer, The US Open Cup is a tournament that includes all 3 major professional soccer leagues in the US; The MLS, The NASL, and the USL. After NCFC thoroughly their local rivals 4-1, I interviewed 2 NCFC fans about NCFC’s bid to become an MLS expansion team (aka moving up into the first division). Both fans asked that only their first names be used. I asked David, in the NCFC Supporters Section, if he was pleased with the direction of the club under its new owner, Steve Malik.

“Yes, I would say so. I’ve actually met the bloke, and he’s a really nice guy. He also really understands the scope of football in this area, and understands how to properly market a club. The new name is a bit boring, but its a lot better than ‘The Carolina Railhawks’. First of all, what in the hell a Railhawk? Who came up with that? Second, its sensible, considering South Carolina’s bid, that he specified that we are a North Carolina club, not just Carolina, like all the sports teams in NC. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years, and I still don’t understand why the Panthers and that red hockey team are just ‘Carolina’ teams. They are both based here in North Carolina, which is a totally different state from South Carolina. Its stupid. And now that he’s specified North Carolina, the MLS can’t [mess] us around and put the expansion club in South Carolina because of that ridiculous bathroom bill, or whatever reason.” said David.

I asked Jaeda (not sure if I’ve spelled that correctly, I lost the sticky note she wrote it on) in the North Stand if she thought NCFC would become an MLS team in the next 5 years, or ever.

“Oh yeah! Hell yeah! We are build this place[Wake Med Soccer Park] into a Sounders’ [Seattle Sounders of the MLS] type Stadium! And we are gonna tear it up, just like Atlanta are! Raleigh is blue and gold, baby!” said Jaeda, before begginning to heckle some Charlotte fans.

Tuesday (Day One)

Former ACC Sports Journal Writer and current sports talk show host, David Glenn, is One of the people who will be accommodating me as an intern during this program. He was also kind enough to have an email conversation with me about his connection with the North Carolina football club (which is the new name for the Railhawks). I suggested to him that he have a five-minute segment about how NCFC are trying to become an MLS team. He then informed me that he has had 2 NCFC players on the show, because even though he doesn’t know much about soccer, its important to make partnerships with sports teams that are important to the community, because it helps to attract viewers and become part of the community.

Day 1- RTI

My first day at RTI was an exciting one. This first day was mostly used as an introduction to the company, facility, staff, and projects of RTI. Dr. Ginger Rothrock, my main contact and mentor at RTI, prepared a presentation for me and Kiera, who is also working at RTI. This presentation described the magnitude of RTI as an international company, and explained some exciting projects that had come out of RTI, or are currently being worked on. Of these, the most interesting to me are the projects to create an HIV prevention implant for women in Africa (HiP) and RTI’s project to create a better toilet. HiP was really fascinating to me, as Dr. Rothrock explained the challenges and stigmas women in Africa face around taking HIV prevention medication. The project to create a better toilet is trying to create a self sufficient toilet that doesn’t need electricity or water, and it’s target is villages in India. I really enjoyed learning briefly about both of these projects, as they are both a perfect intersection between lab science and real world problems.

After eating lunch in the RTI cafeteria, Kiera and I went to one of the labs with Dr. Chasity Norton, Kiera’s main contact. Dr. Norton has worked on a variety of projects at RTI, but her main project involved creating a stronger cement to surround wells, to prevent oil and gas leaks. The work we did today was more of a demonstration for us, rather than contributing to a current project. Dr. Norton showed us how to measure out water, cement powder, and additives to make various cement mixtures. One mixture was purely cement and water, one had 0.5% Calcium Chloride, one had 1.0% Calcium Chloride, and one had 1.0% Maltodextrin. We then put our mixtures into a calorimeter, which will show us the heat of hydration, or the amount of energy produced when the cement sets, over the course of the next few days. The different additives will supposedly change the speed at which the cement sets. Overall, it was really interesting to use lab equipment in a real industry setting, even though we weren’t working on an actual project.

Day 2

Today Shane and I met around 8:45 to dri

The incredibly cool campus, as well as the testing facility where we had the play test.

ve down to Crossroads Boulevard so that we could visit Epic Games. Upon arrival we were greeted by a man named Steve Polge. He walked us through the super cool campus that featured a two story high character from one of Epic Games most recent games, a climbing wall in the main relaxation room, a slide to get from the second floor to the first, and multiple testing rooms for outsiders to come in and test the newest builds for the games.

After the initial tour we got to go back to Mr. Polge’s quarters where he along with his 20 man team are working on the upcoming Unreal Tournament which is currently in Pre-Alpha stages, it was really interesting to see how even such a huge company has such small teams creating games that aren’t all that popular just yet. Mr. Polge was the lead of the team in creating the game, and he was in charge of overseeing what happens. The team, however, also has many different sectors. They have QA’s, an animator, graphic designers, coders, and artists. Each of which work together to create the final version of the game. Throughout the day we learned that each member is only efficient of all of the other members work together. There were times throughout the day that members of each of the fields had to work on tasks that were meant to be done by one of the other fields. This turns out to be very common, understandable, considering how small the team is and how much is to be done in order to eventually produce the game.

After a bit of testing and gameplay, Shane and I were taken to lunch by Mr. Polge, he asked us a few questions about our backgrounds in the field, as well as anything new that we learned or any suggestions that we have for the game. It was cool to learn about how he started out in the field and what interested him originally to stick with Epic Games, and specifically unreal tournament.

After returning back to the facilities from lunch we went back to testing the game, looking for bugs, and also finding new possible changes. It was cool because this time we got to tryout a different game mode and actually play with each other.

Lastly after all questions were asked, we were brought into a test run. 8 of the members from the team as well as shane and I hit if off in a 5 v 5 game where we got to play the game with some real competition for once, rather than the bots that we had been playing with throughout the day. After playing a couple games we had a meeting to converse about any noticible mistakes or places in which the game should be fixed or changed in the future.

All in all the day was so much fun and it was awesome to get to meet Mr. Polge and his team as well as get introduced into that sort of field.

Day 2 – Every Day, the Mystery Continues

On my second day at the Museum, I ran into some difficulties. My Arduino project that I had been working on required an LCD screen; a part that the museum did not have. I decided to put that task on hold, in favor of a project that would be able to be completed even if I didn’t have all the parts. The lab I’m working in has a 3D printer, and I was offered the usage of it, provided that I could create my own original designs, formatted and properly uploaded to the printer. I took the challenge, and spent the majority of the day using a program called Sculptris to mold, shape, and paint a ball of digital clay, that then I could export and upload to the 3D printing and modeling software, where it could be sent to the printer. One specific great story from my second day cam in my interactions with some of the kids that visit the lab. One young boy, maybe around 3rd or 4th grade, looked over my shoulder on my computor as I was designing one particularly hideous alien head. He watched silently, so I decided to engage him, as I was at an artistic crossroads. “You like aliens?” I asked. “Yea” he replied. “What do you think of this one” I asked with baited breath. “Cool. Needs more eyes” he responded. I made the edits right then and there, and showed it to him again. “Good enough?” I eagerly questioned. “Ehh. Sure” He finally responded. After many hours, and many failed designs, I finally created something worth printing; a replica of the head of Zoidberg, a character from the popular show “Futurama.” I painted the head digitally, and all that’s left to do is upload it to the rendering software. I learned a lot about digital creation today, and I think that the skills that I got will be applicable to the future.

Day2, Jonathan Segal, Internal/External Communications

Today I toured in the internal and external communications decisions of SAS. Briefly put, internal coms deals with communications inside the company, employee information type things. External is stuff like PR and press releases that deal with anyone outside the company. My favorite part of the day was when I was talking to an external comm manager and he asked me if I wanted to take a short walk to lunch in a different building. As a guest in another place, I naturally said yes. I have to say I did not expect to walk nearly a mile to and from the different building, although the lunch and conversation were both fantastic.