While I learned a lot in my freshman year in Creative Coding, I still didn't know a lot of basic things, so I was interested in any other oppurtunities that could give a different learning experience. When my mother found an ad about an local internship program called Apprentices in Science and Engineering, she saw it as an oppurtunity for me, and found that that there were some good programming internships in the area hosted by the program. She suggested I apply, and I was nervous at the prospect of it, but I went ahead and applied.

Soon, I had the chance to do an interview at the Harms Lab at the University of Oregon, and I met Mike Harms, the leader of lab, and Zach Sailer, a graduate experienced in programming. There, they talked about the study of their lab, which involves the biophysics of protiens and their evolution.

Several weeks later, we got a call. It a call from a lady of the ASE program, and she told us that I had been accepted into the program, and that I would be working at the Harms Lab. I was very excited at this prospect, and eagerly accepted.

At the Harms Lab, I worked with Zach Sailer, who taught me many things about collaborative code, utilizing javascript libraries such as D3, and using big data. My main job was to work on the Network Viewer, a project that the Harms Lab was creating in order to help percieve the vast network of bacterial mutations from their experiements. They wanted to see which paths of mutations would lead to a strain that was antibiotic resistant, but infering that information simply by looking at a large dataset with all the information from experiements wasn't as easy, so a they created a visual, interactive network. I worked on creating code that would allow the user to see which trajectories were possible, what was the likelihood of them leading to a antibiotic resistant mutation (done by varying the width of the links), and added several other features such as varying size or color of the nodes depending on their likelihood.

I sometimes encountered roadblocks when coding, so I learned ways to troubleshoot, namely by framing what the issue was and googling it, and trying out various approaches to see what worked. I also asked my mentor for help, and they were a valuable resource in helping me figure out what was wrong. I often encountered strange issues that were difficult to understand, so my mentor was instrumental in helping me better understand the code.

At the end of the internship, I had learned so much and I felt inspired to continue what I had been learning. I actually really enjoyed working on the Network Viewer, and I realized what a valubale valuable resource collaborative code could be. I continued to use Github and Git in my future projects, and I also started teaching and developing resources for my Advanced Coding class in my high school based partly on what I had learned there. It was also where I started to take an interest in applying coding to biological fields, as I really enjoyed being able to help further studies by programming - it was the way that I wanted to make a difference. Eventually, my science teacher told me and bioinformatics, and after researching the field, I realized that it sounded exactly what I wanted to do.