Blynn Shideler
Magellan 2015
Reflective Report
If
I had to return to the United States one week into my Magellan Project, I would
have already had the most influential summer of my life. Being immersed into an unfamiliar environment
inevitably yields the opportunity to grow.
When you work the first job in your field, you learn more about a
subject than a classroom could ever teach.
When you travel to a new country, you unveil a culture that once seemed
so esoteric and distant. When you live on
your own, you realize the things in your life that were always given to you,
and thus, you appreciate the word “independence” to a new extent. As for me, when I combined all of these
experiences into one long summer in Paris, it was impossible for a day to go by
without learning something new, whether it was about science, about the world,
or about myself.
At
Washington & Jefferson, I am double majoring in the Engineering 3-2 program
and French. Accordingly, I could not
have organized a better Magellan to fit my academic interests. This summer, I spent twelve weeks in Paris, France
as a biomedical research intern at the University of Paris Descartes and l’École Normale Supérieure: two
of the top engineering schools in France.
I had the opportunity to follow several projects that used different
techniques to quantify human proprioception in the motor nervous system during human
activity. Everyday I spent in the lab, I
learned more about this research, and I was soon allowed to design and conduct
a few experiments of my own.
From
a researcher’s perspective, my Magellan Project allowed me to learn about
modern day engineering research and gain hands-on experience working in a lab
far more than I would have at any research internship available in the United
States—especially those available as a freshman. I worked for a company called CogNac-G
(Cognitive Action Group): a research team led by a globally-known researcher,
Dr. Pierre-Paul Vidal, who has projects running at several different
universities and hospitals all across France.
CogNac-G’s main goal is to continue using modern technology to determine
characteristics about a healthy human proprioceptive system. As for the projects at Paris Descartes and
ENS, we analyzed characteristics about the human Gait cycle. The Gait cycle refers to different stages of
normal walking motion. Before my
internship, I never considered how complex human walking actually could be. Walking seems like second-nature activity,
but as it turns out, muscle activation patterns during Gait are far more
complex than “one foot in front of the other.”
For
the majority of my internship, we conducted several experiments that used
electromyography to quantify neuromuscular activity. Electromyography trackers (EMGs) are
essentially sensors that can be placed on the surface of the skin over a muscle
that they analyze. In simplest terms,
when a muscle wants to move, the
brain tells motor neurons in the spinal cord or brain stem to send signals and
create neuromuscular synapses with muscle fibers—a process called
innervation. When many motor neurons
innervate muscle fibers, it generates a small electric potential across that
muscle (usually on the order of 100 microvolts). This small voltage can be detected by a
series of electrodes attached to an EMG.
Thus, EMG’s are very useful for determining which muscles are activated
during a certain activity. It turns out
that upwards of thirty muscles can experience activation during a normal Gait
cycle.
This specific
research proved to be very beneficial to my future career aspirations. As a biomedical engineer, my dream is to
someday work in prosthetic engineering and design. In fact, my original idea for a Magellan
project was to work with a prosthetic designing company. In retrospect, for my first internship in
bioengineering, my work this summer in France was perhaps equally beneficial to
me in regards to a future in prosthetics.
As I reflected on how I could take the work that I did this summer and
use it in my future research, I considered the importance of knowing the Gait
cycle is in prosthetic design. A thought
popped into my head one day while working in the lab, and I reasoned that it
seems beneficial that those who design prosthetic legs would want a leg to be
able to imitate a healthy Gait cycle as closely as possible. It made me wonder how often the Gait cycle is
considered in prosthetic research today.
Perhaps the most
amazing aspect of working in a lab is how quickly you become an expert in a concentrated
field. As a freshman coming into my
internship, I knew next to nothing about modern day research, let alone
electromyography. To be quite honest, I
didn’t even know what the proprioceptive system or the Gait cycle actually were
until my first day working at Paris Descartes.
Nevertheless, it only took a couple of days of reading publications and
touring laboratories before I began to follow and understand the conversations
of the researchers. Overall, it taught
me a lesson in self-confidence. Now, regardless
of having previous knowledge on a particular subject, I believe that there is
nothing that I cannot understand to some degree. I will try to keep that in mind next time I am
in a situation where I have no idea what anyone is talking about…
Clearly,
academically, the research I completed in France was beneficial to my future as
an engineer, but the research was only a fraction of the lessons I learned
while I was in France. After all, I am a
French student as well. One of the obstacles
that I underestimated when I planned this project (that should have seemed
obvious) is that when conducting research in France, most of the research is
done in French. This added a whole new degree of difficulty to
working in the lab. However, after I
overcame my culture shock and nerves, and as my French improved with time,
working in another language became a remarkable learning experience. I felt like 50% of the time I was in physics
class, but 100% of the time I was in French class. The brain is a fascinating piece of machinery,
and I learned first-hand how well the human mind tends to naturally adapt to its
environment. It is fascinating to
experience how quickly your language improves when it constantly surrounds
you. Every day, I forced myself to
listen: conversations on the metro, family arguments at the dinner table, remarks
of drunken homeless men on the Saturday night streets, whatever situation I was
in at the time. Each day, the foreign
language became less foreign to me.
Aside from the
language itself, I admired living a French lifestyle. Some differences between Paris, France and
Washington, Pennsylvania were a whole new experience to me, such as the
craziness of weekday morning metro traffic.
Others were subtle, such as how couples sit on the same side of the table
at the street corner restaurant. French
culture was quaint and unique. Some
Parisian stereotypes turned out to be blatantly true; Yes, Parisians hate
obnoxious Americans. Frankly, I don’t
blame them. I couldn’t help but hang my
head in shame the morning that voices of two American women echoed through the
metro as they complained about their poor Wifi connection at their hotel. It made me realize where this “loud and
inconsiderate American” stereotype came from.
Other stereotypes remained a mystery to me; I might have seen five
people wearing berets the whole summer.
Regardless, leaving the United States for the first time, I learned a
valuable lesson—one that I heard a million times but never truly understood
until I traveled. The world is enormous. Every neighborhood, village, town, city,
state, region, and country in this world has its own unique
characteristics. Depending on where you
have been and what you are used to, some characteristics may appear more
strange and outlandish than others. However,
to the people that live there and are used to that way of life, they are the
norm. To them, you are the one who is
different. I think it takes a very open
mind to appreciate that.
Overall, my project
forced me to grow independently. As I
was reflecting one night over seas, I considered the process of growing up and maturing
as an independent. This is what I
decided: as kids, your parents tend to make most decisions on your behalf. As you grow, you slowly gain the power and
the maturity to decide more things on your own: what you will wear today; what
you will eat for lunch; what you will do in your free time. Later on, the decisions yield more impact on
your life: what courses you will take next year; where you will go to
college. Finally, when I left for
college, I thought that I was as independent as I would ever be. I thought that every decision in my life was
finally up to me to decide. To some
extent, I was right. Surely, going to
college was the biggest leap of independence that I had ever experienced up to
that point in my life. However, from this new point of view, I realize now how
much is still provided for me while I am at college. At school, I never have to worry about what I
will eat for dinner, or how I will get to class, or where I will sleep. Plus, if there is any trouble that I cannot
handle by myself, my parents are always a car ride away. I began to realize that luxury of college as
I was standing alone in an airport, 5000 miles away from a familiar face, with
one hand shaking as I tried to read a map for the first time in my life, and
the other hand clasping hard to my luggage because it was the closest thing I
had to home. At that moment, it struck
me that the answers were no longer right in front of me, and I was alone to overcome
whatever obstacles lied ahead.
After spending three months alone
overseas, this nervousness faded, and I grew accustomed to the discomfort. I realized that sometimes in life, there are
things that simply cannot be prepared for.
Using my own knowledge, instinct, and courage is often the best I can do. My Magellan Project taught me all of these
things, and without this opportunity, I may have never had the chance to do
so. I am so thankful for my Magellan
experience, and because of it, I can now say with absolute confidence that I
can live independently.
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