Om Sahaym
Autumn 2024
Immunology, iGEM kicking my butt, turning 21
Artifacts
Immunology 441: I figured that this class would be interesting because it is the field of biology I would say I am most interested in. My research mentor had been telling me to take the class, but since it is only offered once a year, I hadn’t been able to until now. Combining the knowledge gained from my lab work and mentors with my previous classes like Biol 401, Genome 361, Biol 356, and Biochem, this class was super fascinating. It really felt like the culmination of a lot of the struggles of the last few years in understanding biology – it really paid off as I was able to grasp the content quickly and explore interesting questions that I usually wouldn’t be able to think of. For example, this image that I had been using in lab presentations without ever really understanding is now a breeze to explain - if you give me a few minutes to revise my notes!
Image credit:
Mettelman RC, Allen EK, Thomas PG. Mucosal immune responses to infection and vaccination in the respiratory tract. Immunity. 2022;55(5):749-780. doi:10.1016/j.immuni.2022.04.013
For this year's iGEM project from February to October, I was in charge of the Human Practices team. It was my first time leading people in a research project, and I recognized some challenges in my own time management and timeline planning. While I tried to be flexible as the majority of the work had to occur over the summer while people were on vacation, I wasn't always able to get other people to do consistent work. I realized some of that stemmed from my own tendencies to sit down and do things in big blocks of time, which didn't leave me with enough time to plan workflows for other people. When it came to the deadline for our wiki deliverable in the beginning of Autumn Quarter, I ended up taking on almost of the work to write the Human Practices section, which ended up being a ton of work (and my first exposure to energy drinks as a source of caffeine). Our work ended up being judged as excellent as we earned a gold medal (UW iGEM's first in many years)! While I was tremendously proud of my team's work, this experience also helped me reflect on some areas of improvement when it comes to managing other people.
Turning 21 was an interesting time for me. I felt like I hadn't changed very much in my 21st year as compared to my 20th year, so it almost didn't feel like turning 21 was a super big deal. I had a couple small celebrations, and it was really fun to be with my parents and brother for a weekend retreat. I think I was just so caught with iGEM just finishing, other clubs kicking off, and midterms that I hadn't had a chance to sit and reflect on the year. At this point, I do think turning 21 was a big deal; I've had a lot of good times over the past year and have a really good group of people around me to rely on! And I can go to bar trivia nights now - losing that tiebreaker at Big Time was a lot of fun (yet very frustrating).
Here is a link to our website!
