I know that it's already 4 weeks -- almost 5 now -- into A term, and I'm a bit late on the bandwagon, but I really wanted to be able to give my internship a well planned and thought out article.

This past summer, I was given an amazing chance to work at the State of New Hampshire's Department of Health and Human Services Water Analysis Lab (I know, it's a mouthful). I worked in the Chemistry lab, as the summer intern. And among the practical laboratory experience I gained, I learned a lot of other skills.

The first couple of weeks of my internship, I mainly did a turbidity test, which was a fairly simple test of the concentration of metals in a water sample. They taught me the procedure by going through a sample run and then handed the metaphorical baton over to me, letting me do all of the samples from then on, without much in the way of supervision. I made sure to ask a bunch of questions when I was even slightly unsure of what to do in a certain situation, which they appreciated, and made all of our lives easier in the long run.

While doing that, they also had me do some odd jobs for them, like entering data into their information database, some filing, washing bottles, and dumping old samples. I enjoyed being able to be there for people when they needed help with anything, and broadening my skill set by doing as many different and new things that I possibly could.

A couple of weeks in, my coworker taught me my main job for the summer; I ran the autosampler for their total phosphorus test. The total phosphorus test had a few steps to it, including acidifying the water samples, digesting them by placing them on a hot block, and then loading the samples onto the test tube rack, where the autosampler would send the samples to be mixed with ascorbic acid and molybdate reagents. The molybdate reagent reacted with the digested sample, tinting it a darker shade of blue when there's a higher concentration of phophorus in the sample. The machine tests the wavelength, and integrates peaks to give the concentration amounts.

I learned how to manage my time during my work weeks, since the total phosphorus test needed to be kept up at a relatively fast pace in order to keep up with the large volume of samples that came in weekly. I also had to keep up with the turbidity samples and logging in all of my data for the two tests, so I became really good at scheduling in my twelve weeks. I also managed to make time for helping with data entry for many coworkers, peer reviewing data that had previously been entered, and acidifying acid-soluble aluminum samples to a pH of between 1.6 and 1.8 in a clean room, since the air in a normal room has a trace amount of aluminum that could contaminate the samples.

I also got to observe some other processes that were happening in the lab, including a Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometer with an Argon plasma flame, an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer, and organic extractions in separatory funnels. My coworkers were nice enough to show me how these things worked, and I couldn't have worked with a better group of people this summer. They also learned a thing or two from the interns, including which little plants work best as desk plants, and which ones are too fussy such that over-watering and under-watering will both kill the plant (totally not speaking from personal experience or anything lol).

All in all I had a wonderful and educational summer experience, and it made me want to work in a lab as a career even more!