Career and Leadership Development Academy, Cohort One, Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals Day

Career and Leadership Development Academy Cohort One, Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals Day Blog

Written by the 7th grade team at Holly Shelter

Throughout the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce’s Career and Leadership Development Academy ten month program, each of the eight middle schools are assigned a day to write about their experiences. 51 students from across all eight New Hanover County middle schools participated in the fourth industry exploration day in Cohort One, Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals, on December 13 at UNCW’s Center for Marine Science. In addition to learning about careers in the industry, they had the opportunity to participate in a lab test and learn about what it means to dress for success. Below is the fourth blog write up from Cohort One of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce’s Career and Leadership Academy experience.

     Today we visited The UNCW Center for Marine Science for an all day field trip. We were greeted by a few people from Thermo Fisher Scientific, this is a company whose mission is to enable customers to have a world that is healthy, cleaner, and safer. They gave us speeches about what goes into Marine Biology, vaccines, drugs, and medicine. We looked forward to learning about how they worked together and what goes into their process of their work to create new forms of drugs. There were many activities we did and places we visited. We saw labs and complicated high tech equipment. The scientists at the Center for Marine Science study DNA and how it could be used to discover drugs and medicines. We liked meeting new people who talked to us about the medicine they created for different types of diseases. We heard from a wide variety of people who talked about what education they went through to become a part of the company that they work for.

     We met a wide variety of people who have degrees in life science.We also met many professors who all said that no matter what you major or minor in, most people end up with a different career path. Like Mary, who is the senior director for Thermo Fisher, had majored in English and minored in biology but ended up more in the science field. Another example is Jennifer McCall who went to UNC Chapel Hill and UNC Charlotte and got a Masters Degree in birds but found out it wasn’t for her, ended up getting a PhD in Immunology. She had also gotten a Master of Business Administration.  Dr.McCall is a professor who now teaches freshmen about drug development and different types of cures and drugs. Our last example about career paths not always going the way we thought it would go is Jeff Phillips. He graduated from College Station, Texas and was a former school teacher. He had started as pre-med and majored in religion and ethnicity. Mr.Phillips said that while getting a job was hard, finding clothes to fit himself was even harder. This was because at just 13, he stood at 6 feet and was already a size 13 in shoes. He is now 6 feet 5 inches and size 16 in shoes. Since Jeff’s first job was at Chick-Fil-A, they gave him clothes to wear at the job so he didn’t have to go buy them himself. He showed us the 3 types of business attire that fit the dress code for many places you would work at. The attires are traditional business attire which includes dark-colored suits, ties, pantsuits, neat dresses, skirts, or slacks. This is more for like if you’re going to an interview or somewhere formal. Smart casual Business attire which includes blazers, dresses, sports jackets, sweaters, trousers, blouses, khakis, scarves, or jewelry. This would fit in the trendy section if you just wanted to show off but still be in the dress code. This attire is typically more comfortable. Business casual attire includes knee-length skirts, dark jeans without holes, button-down shirts, sweaters, blouses, henleys or polo shirts. It would also include knee-length or maxi dresses. This attire is mainly if you are just going to work and meeting clients since this attire is comfortable and not too formal leaving you feeling a bit more relaxed. He also taught us that the way you dress and present yourself is important because it reflects on how people see you. 

     What we did today is have a tour of the algae center and we did an experiment of extracting DNA from a strawberry. In the algae center we looked at a variety of different types of algae and the people told us how it helps their research to find cures for viruses. In the experiment of extracting DNA from strawberries we went to a lab and the first thing we did was take water that was in a conical test tube and mixed it with 10 drops of dishsoap. We took the strawberry in the bag and we mashed it into juice and then poured the liquid from the test tube into the strawberry bag and mixed it for 2 minutes. We poured it into a coffee filter and let it sit until it stopped dripping. The final thing we did in that experiment was pour alcohol into the test tube then it started to extract the DNA from the strawberry while it was in the test tubes as long as we didn't mix it. We heard other speakers and one talked about how to dress up for business jobs and interviews. At the end of that person’s speech we played a game of who dressed up better for the job. Finally, we listened to people from Thermo Fisher Scientific and they talked about how they tested vaccines on people to find ways to prevent and cure diseases such as covid-19, stroke, flu, and cancer. Ultimately it was a very fun experience, the building was fancy, decorated with art, and some places gave aquarium feelings.
         

     We learned that during Covid 19 a company named Thermo Fisher Scientific made a lot of medicine to help hospitals and other places. Since strawberries have a lot of DNA in them we used them for an activity where we used common household items to extract DNA from the strawberry. We learned how to use  a pipette and a conical test tube. There was also a speaker that talked about what we should wear during a job interview and what we shouldn't wear. It is important to know what we should wear and what we should not wear because if we do not come into an interview looking professional then they won't take you seriously and they will not hire you. It’s important to know what the company dress code is because you do not want to break it and then have a risk of getting fired because if you do follow the rules you might have a chance of going to the next level and becoming a manager and you want to show a good example to your boss. Also, one of the speakers talked about how she made a medicine and how she had to stop  giving it out because it started making other people's skin blue. The people from Thermo Fisher Scientific talked about how long it takes for the drugs to get from the lab to the hospitals. It takes a few or maybe even more years to get the drug to where people are at to help them. There are trial sites all over the world which involve thousands of participants.    

    In conclusion, we learned about life sciences with the help of several amazing people.

Some of the conversations we had today were about how to dress for interviews, work, etc.

Many people helped us to understand how important life science is for curing illnesses such as cancer, covid, delta, and many other types of illnesses. We conducted an experiment that the helpers thoughtfully planned out for us to understand how to extract DNA. These kind people have helped us understand more about life sciences and helped us build a thought process of whether or not it is something we want to pursue in a future career. They have answered many of our questions and it was very enjoyable to learn about life sciences with them and see where all the “magic” is done while on our tour through the labs. The people of the UNCW Center of Marine Science are very remarkable and we were elated to go on this trip.