Non-academic challenge?

[AccuracyTips]

Secondary from wake-forest asks about non-academic challenge. I was going to talk about a challenge in a 6 month full time internship I had a biotech company. This was during my senior year of college as a co-op. Would this still be considered non-academic challenge since I was not in a traditional learning environment as it was more experiential. Or is this still considered academic? Thank you


The goal was to talk about all the assays I had to run on large # of samples and the transition from academic research to the industry side and how I overcame the gaps I had.

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[AccuracyTips]

Hmm, technically this is academic? But I'm wondering now, those who are out of school but working in research, would that count as academic too? I guess it depends on the definition of academic for the school/adcom.

Personally if I were you, I would look for something else just to be on the safe side.

Yeah that is what I was confused about. I was a full time intern during the school year. I guess it can be interpreted differently

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Depends on the challenge, but if this happened in an internship, it's different from missing an assignment or doing badly on exams.

 

[AccuracyTips]

Depends on the challenge, but if this happened in an internship, it's different from missing an assignment or doing badly on exams.

So are you saying because this does not have anything to do with missing an assignment or doing badly on exams, I can classify it as non academic? The challenge is more so transition from research in an academic setting to a biotech and overcoming failure on the technical parts of the work. something along those lines.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

So are you saying because this does not have anything to do with missing an assignment or doing badly on exams, I can classify it as non academic? The challenge is more so transition from research in an academic setting to a biotech and overcoming failure on the technical parts of the work. something along those lines.

I will be explicit. What are you going to talk about? What specifically about this transition is the focus?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

As I transitioned to a biotech, I was an analytical development intern focused on specializing in ddPCR and ELISA assays and working with preclinical samples. I became overwhelmed by the sheer volume of samples that we were testing on a weekly basis, while juggling other responsibilities in my role, such as assay development, working/coordinating with other teams in the company.

The main thing I will focus on is in the beginning of the internship, I was not able to consistently perform reliable and accurate assays that could be used in the analysis of different drug candidates. This was due to the volume of the samples, not being able to adjust quickly to the demands of the workflow, not being overly familiar with protocols. I will talk about how I reached out to other members on my team looking for guidance, meeting with my supervisor to initiate a review process so that I could address any gaps I had at the time. How I shadowed other members of my team until I became sufficient in performing protocols on my own to produce data that influences decisions made by other development teams. Ultimately, I became involved in a project to develop a novel, in house ELISA assay so I was able to make a huge leap from where I started to where I ended.

Ok. That's definitely not an "academic" challenge.