Mishika G.

Hi, I'm Mishika, a rising sophomore at Skyline High School and I was in session 2. My time at the Fred Hutch Pathways Explorers program was the highlight of my summer, and I will always remember it. I got exposed to so many careers I didn't even know existed and got to learn so many cool new things! During the program we got to hear from several guest speakers from Fred Hutch. One of my personal favorites was Dr. Raabya and Dr. Paul's lecture. Both of them are part of the Edlefsen Group, which works on developing solutions to advance the infectious disease field by combining statistics, mathematics, biology, bioinformatics and computing. They came in and talked to us about their unique journeys and how they ended up at the Hutch. It was so interesting how different their paths were, and how they tried so many things until they found what they loved. As someone who is still unsure about what I would like to do in the future, their advice was so reassuring and inspirational. The specific advice that stuck with me was how decisions that feel huge and life defining, like college applications, are actually just small parts of our larger lives, which made me so much less stressed. They also talked about how they both made major switches in their career path but still wouldn't change a single thing about their journey because it shaped who they are as people. This made me less afraid of making mistakes or taking a path that might not lead to where I expect.  

This is all of us listening to Dr. Raabya and Dr. Paul introduce themselves! 

Some of my other highlights are everything we learnt in the training lab, specifically micropipetting and gel electrophoresis. It was so cool to see how much we had improved these skills from the start of the program to the end. At the start, most of us did not even know how to set the measurement on a micropipette and didn’t even know what gel electrophoresis is used for. At the end of the program, we had been using micropipettes in every lab and got to perform gel electrophoresis with the BRCA1 gene after we amplified it by doing PCR (Polymerase chain reaction). BRCA1 is a common gene that when mutated, significantly increases the risk of breast cancer.  

This is the flower I made using a micropipette the day we learnt how to use them! 

This is us doing gel electrophoresis for the first time! We used food dye as our samples for this one! 

Lastly, I enjoyed all the fun activities and games we played as a group. We played so much Mafia and got really good at it too! We also did a potluck, made a candy salad, and played Heads Up and Imposter. All these things helped us all become closer as friends, and we looked forward to doing these activities in every break we had, especially Mafia!  

This is us figuring out who died in our Mafia game! 

I am so thankful I got to be a part of this program and will always remember all the fun I had and everything I learnt!