#Intern 101 Part 2: My internship experience

Bismillah.

When I filled up my internship application form, I just google from the nearest place to my house and I came up with few potential places. After much consideration, I decided to put INBIOSIS for my first choice and MARDI for the second choice.

Little that I know, I may had made the biggest mistake in my life. It turns out that my first choice was accepted by the institution and I started my internship on 8th of September.

The First Day

On my first day as I'm not really familiar with the place, my parents drove me and trust me, we didn't believe such place existed and I realised that; "Oh no, I had made a wrong choice". The place is very far from the main campus area and there is no cafe or any food stall within the area. The fact that I'm the only one intern from UPM had made feel scared and intimidated that I might get alienated in this place.

It is a very awkward first day. I have my own bench and I need to mingle around with the members of the Proteomics Lab. They are nice but maybe because I'm an introvert upon my first meet up with strangers so I prefer to keep myself silent and spend the whole day observing people. I get a Master student to monitor my mini project and that is how I spent the never-ending first day.

Because basically, I just waited for 2 hours for my SV > She introduced me to my mentor > Tour around the institution > Short briefing and introduction session > Waiting for Ibu to pick me up = end of day 1.

The First Month

Bored is the most suitable word to describe my first month experience. As what I remembered, I just spend my time looking at others doing their projects, googling for journals and read it. I did do some of bioinformatic analysis but managed to complete it in a week or two and the extra free time? I just make sure that I stay alive until the clock struck 5.00 or 5.30 pm and it is the time for me to go home. During this first month, I couldn't stop comparing myself with my friends because it seems that they have a better place and at least they did something.

This month was the most tiring time as it is the fasting month as I need to spend my whole day reading journals and not much lab works.
But I get to went back early usually around 4.30 to 5 pm. Yeah!

The Second Month

This is when things get better. I become more closed with the students especially with the Proteomics' lab mates except with the guys because I'm pretty shy when interacting with the opposite genders so I don't really have many conversations with them. My talkative nature seems to escape somewhere as I tend to be silent and alienated myself there. Maybe because I feel intimidated and at certain times, I barely understand what they talking about. Guessed we are not speaking the same language.

So during the second month, I have completed the preliminary steps of my projects that is one the sequence analysis and I had design few primer sets and I was waiting to do some wet labs work. This project is actually a Ph.D. project and my SV doesn't have any students yet. So my jobs were to do some basic analysis and if time permits, to do some wet labs too.

My project is basically to develop an  'environmental-friendly' bioinsecticides and in my case, the targeted pest is the cocoa pod borer. One of the growth hormone regulator that existed in both cocoa plant and the pest is targeted to see the inhibitory effect of this hormone to both host and pest.

The Third Month

Finally, the last month of internship. Even on the last month, I don't have the chance to do lab works because of the sample limitation and the RNA kit. At the mean time, I learned to prepare buffer, learn few basic molecular techniques, help Kak Zila to transfer all her baby Plutella xylostella and just being nosy and disturb others from their works.

This is the important month as on one particular day in this month, one of the faculty's lecturers will visit and evaluate you and mine were Dr. Maria. Depending on the lecturers, maybe you need to do a short presentation follow up with few QnA session. The most nerve-wracking part is when the visiting lecturers asked you to leave the room for them to evaluate your performance from your supervisor's perspective.

I don't even get to bid a proper farewell with all the lab mates during my last day as I have some emergency at home and I went back early.



It is quite hard to compile all the memories, the knowledge and experience gained during the internship period in one blog post. Besides, I tried to avoid writing a lengthy post which I oftenly tend to do.

Maybe mine was not as interested or great as others but I pretty much enjoy my time there.

Lesson Learnt

• Sometimes, the first thing to do is to stop comparing yourself with others. Try your best to enjoy your time there and make lots of memories.
• Be nice to everyone and improve your networking. You may not know in future, which one of them will be such a great help to you.
• Try to learn and ask as much as you can. It is ok not to know everything than not to know anything.
• Do some research on the background of your potential employers and the company/institution.

Well, I do regret on certain things but I believe that Allah is the best planner and everything happened for a reason. Maybe not at that particular time but in future.

I wish the best of luck to all my juniors that will be going for their industrial training this semester. It is ok to ask a lot from us, the seniors but the best is to keep some of the questions unanswered and find the excitement and thrilled of discovering it.