During our time at Bayer Crop Science this summer Linnea and I had numerous professionals that we got to work with. We rotated throughout each department and got to spend time seeing how each professional spent their day and gather information from each of them.
I had some of my biggest “ah ha” moments when we were in the labs at the Innovation Center. For instance, before entering this experience I could explain genetic modification in very basic terms… it is the process were genes from one plant are put into another plant. I could not go in to further detail than this. However, Chris was able to show us slides that demonstrated exactly what was happening at a cellular level. From this one day in the lab, I felt like I left with more knowledge gained than I had learned in my high school biology class. I left really understanding how genetic modification is done and the history behind it.
Overall, Linnea and I got the best of many worlds in this internship. We got to work side by side with many different professionals, we got to work a little on our own, and side by side with our main mentor Danielle. We had great working relationships with everyone we met. We got to learn from them and I think each of them learned a little from us as well.
I think from this relationship with my mentors and everyone I was able to work with at Bayer, the lasting impact is definitely the knowledge and experience I gained. I am able to share this with my students and hopefully inspire them to professional fields that they are unaware of. I also, now have a network of people who are more than willing to volunteer or share their expertise with my students.
Thanks to everyone at Bayer Crop Science we had the honor of working with!