top of page

Undergraduate Experiences

​

 

About

Orlando afforded me a place to explore my most specific academic interests and serve in clinical and non-clinical capacities that brought me clarity and passion for the type of career in medicine that I desire to have. 

360_F_720324969_yHEOs0iqYL3XPu4CxA6RHBinoRJuMAJ4.jpg

UCF Labs 

Selecting UCF as my undergraduate institution has come with an abundance of unexpected returns, and I am grateful that I discovered some of the infrastructure in place to sturdily connect students to opportunities of a lifetime. Thanks to the instructors, the coursework has given me significant exposure to laboratory and research practices in the medical field or those adjacent. 

​

Not only did the labs serve as a way to reinforce the information I was learning in the lecture courses on my way to becoming a doctor, but they also gave me a hint of what I could expect my day-to-day tasks could potentially look like. My instructors went above and beyond in the way they explained the possible careers that would use their foundations. I discovered how much I enjoy the practice of methodical and fine motor techniques in the life sciences. I also particularly appreciate the planning process and collaboration involved in the engineering labs.

gel.png
gel.png

Quantitative Biological Methods

  • SDS-PAGE

    • with TCE

  • Western Transfer

    • nitrocellulose

  • Western Blot

    • with fluorescent antibodies

​

  • Affinity Chromatography

  • Ion Exchange Chromatography 

  • Hanging drop crystallization​​

​

  • Lowry Assay 

  • Bradford assay

  • DC Protein Assay

  • CDNB Enzyme Assay

​

​

​

​​​

  • ​​​​​​​Micropipetting

  • Centrifugation 

  • Spectrophotometry

  • Agarose Gel Electrophoresis 

  • PCR

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

​

  • DNA ligation and transformation of E.Coli​​​​​​​​​​

​

​Materials​​​

  • NanoDrop

  • Plasmid Miniprep

  • Gel-doc EZ system

  • 96-well microplates​

​​​​​

​

​​​​

Techniques 

Experimental Technique in Mechanics and Materials

Tests 

  • Charpy Impact

  • Izod Impact

  • Vicker’s Micro-Hardness​

  • Tesile Test​

  • Compression

  • Three-points bending/flexural

Machinery 

  • Instron Impact Tester

  • Leco Vickers Hardness Tester

  • Instron Tesile Tester Model 3369  

  • JEOL 6320F Environmental SEM

​​​​

Microscopy ​

  • Stereo, Conventional, and metallurgy optical 

  • Scanning Electron 

  • Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometer Analysis

quad plate.HEIC

Microbiology Lab

Techniques ​

  • ​Aseptic Technique 

  • Smear preparation

  • Bright field microscopy

​

  • Gram stain

  • Simple stain

  • Negative staining

  • Spore Stain

    • ​Shaeffer-fulton

  • Acid Fast stain

    • ​Ziehl-nielsen

​​​

  • Pure culture methods

    • Streak plate

    • Spread plate ​​

​​​​​​​

​Media 

​​GP

  • Nutrient Agar

  • Tryptic Soy Agar

  • Brain Heart Infusion​

​

Selective/Diff./Comb.

  • Phenyl Ethyl Agar

  • Eosin Methylene Blue

  • MacConkey Agar

  • Blood Agar
    ​​

Motile 

Soft agar with Tetrazolium chloride​​​

Studies ​​

  • Gram-positive study:

    • Staphylococcus/Streptococcus differentiation

  • Gram-negative study:

    • Salmonella/Proteus/Enterobacter/E.coli differentiation

  • Antimicrobial study

    • Kirby-baur assay

  • MPN

    • coliform determination​​​

  • Dilutions:

    • Viable plate count ​​​​​​

Volunteering

Serving children of Orlando in different formats have grown my love and confidence for a career caring for them. 

Grace Church Nursery

Serving at Grace Church has been an unexpected but consistent and strong reason I know that I desire to serve the newborn population in a medical context. Volunteering every weekend has connected me with incredible families and revealed that my problem-solving skills are intuitive and impactful when infants are in distress.

​

I've identified the qualities of settings I enjoy: working on my feet, fully assessing a physical situation, information sharing, trying to find the solutions that are the best-informed with the least amount of collateral “damage” generated, and that require remaining calm, attuned, and dynamic. Additionally, I practiced leveraging the application of solutions to supersede the state before the scenario.  

 

I liked getting to responsively receive data on the child’s needs and nonverbally assess the parent's concerns and the child joining us. I liked getting to provide reassurance from a team that I had confidence in and help give them context back. The church and families share the goals of whole-family support and taking small manageable steps. Some of the practices I’ve found to be most supportive of this were informing the parents of details about our allergy policy, providing tours of our toys and programs, or sharing plans to text within 10 minutes of a drop-off with a photo of their child settled down for their peace of mind during the service or asking them to reconnect if the child is still having challenges with the separation.

 

These strategies led to parents having more peace and clarity to focus on their own personal goals of coming to church. They also supported this being another safe space for babies to form stable, gradual, consistent, and healthy connections outside of the home. I love the opportunity to piece together a baby's patterns, integrate my impression with my multi-sourced knowledge bank, and discover adjustments that best fulfill their needs, without verbal communication being a vehicle. Clarity, curiosity, confidence, compassion, and collaboration are necessary in this environment and strengths of mine that I thoroughly enjoy using. I feel my best when I am in this type of physical space, and this experience has invaluably given me information about what I want in my career. 

Pediatric Neurology PA

​The local clinical experience that has most contributed to my career path was volunteering as a clinical research assistant for pharmaceutical trials in pediatric neurology. I came to find that scouring through the FDA protocol fine print substantially increased the precision of my own thought processes. Reading through the contingencies was very rewarding seeing it in a medical context; I am passionate about isolating circumstances to firmly draw out the dynamic factor in general life. Seeing examples of constructs that had professional consensus was helpful in learning the specific patterns of extents of inclusion and exclusion that would probably apply to modeling in my own research.

 

I also learned about epilepsy from a unique perspective by reading the logs of patient histories. I saw surrounding symptomology that I otherwise would not have this early in my career. It grew my compassion, tolerance of frustrations in my own life, gratitude, and activism for solutions. 

IMG_9767.jpg

© 2023 By Grace Mikesell. All rights reserved.

bottom of page