I had the wonderful opportunity to work in a lab in the Neuroscience Department for about 6 months. I started in the summer of 2017 and was immediately intrigued by all of the projects going on. I was assigned to help a graduate student with her project involving the mTOR pathway and oligodendrocyte regeneration. She had several projects underway, which involved the spinal cords of either rats or mice. I was trained to work with the animals, and was even able to help prepare them for surgeries. My main duties in the lab included blocking and cutting spinal cord tissue, staining slides, and counting cells. I learned to identify and count several different types of cells, and mostly focused on counting the areas where two different types of cells were overlapping. I learned so much about the scientific process in this lab, and even gained some important skills in interpreting journal articles. Every other Wednesday, the grad students in my lab had a journal club in which I was allowed to participate. I would read the selected articles to the best of my ability beforehand, and listen as the grad students explained the figures and discussed the articles. This was extremely helpful for me because listening to their discussions clarified so much about the articles and figures that I was not too sure about when I first read them. Ultimately, this lab was a great experience, but a combination of several factors lead me to make the decision to step away from it in my second semester of sophomore year. I had learned so much about the research process, but I had also leaned a lot about myself, including the fact that this lab was just not the best thing for me at the time. I knew that there were definitely students out there who were 100% sure they wanted to pursue a PhD that would be ecstatic to be in my position and would be passionate about taking over the project that I was working on. This, along with my desire to become more involved in volunteering and other activities outside of research helped me make my decision to leave the lab. Despite this decision, I am so grateful for the time I spent in this lab and for all of the knowledge I gained from my incredible P.I. and all of the graduate students in the lab.