The past week was focused around my second research assessment, beginning my rough draft of my resumé, and learning how to introduce myself. I enjoyed the work this week because it was very unstructured and allowed me to be creative. I also liked being able to choose what to do my research assessment over. In addition, the work this week (especially the resumé and handshake assignment) will be applicable outside of ISM and in the future.

 

The research assessment took up the majority of my time, as I planned to do it first. I chose to research AIDS because immune system disorders interest me, and I think not enough research has been done on most STDs because for a long time they were considered “taboo”. The research I did was on how AIDs should be handled and a preventive measure that is still being worked on called microbicides. The author of the first article I read suggested that more work should be done for developing countries because close to 90% of the population affected by AIDS lives in these countries. The second article agreed with this point, and suggested a form of prevention that would be plausible for people in developing countries: microbicides. These microbicides, while not yet functional, provide hope for the future. Besides the medical aspect, a lot of what I learned from this research was more practical to the present. For example, the second article I read talked about one study on microbicides that failed. However, just because of one failure, testing on microbicides didn't halt, and progress continued. I plan to apply this philosophy on failure to my time in ISM and beyond. I will not halt progress just because of difficulty.

 

My rough draft of my resumé isn't very far along at the moment, but I began to think about color, layout, and information. I plan to use a blue and grey color scheme to match my theme but remain professional. I'm not entirely sure about layout at the moment, but I am thinking about have two colors. I also began to list out my activities and qualities on a separate document so that I can easily insert the information once I have my layout. Both my work on my resume and learning how to shake hands will be very applicable in future interviews in ISM and later. Overall, this week was fairly uneventful, but still helpful in learning things that will be useable in my future professional life.