Summer School
Picture this: It’s summer in Maine, the sun is shining, the crisp water of the nearby lakes is beckoning ... and you’re in a lab or an office, with weather.com acting as your main connection to the outside world. Might not sound like an ideal way to spend the summer, but the fact is, a lot of people choose to spend their summer doing research. And they see it as a privilege, not a punishment.
On the cutting edge of chemical synthesis, Tatenda Mahlokozera '09 makes safety glasses look stylish.
Last summer more than 70 students worked at Colby as research assistants on projects ranging from the obscure (fruit fly bristle genetics and compounds that make frogs smell froggy) to the esoteric (editing philosophy articles for clarity and expressiveness and researching the International Criminal Court’s African cases). What all the projects have in common is that they give students a deep understanding of an area of study.
Research assistants (RAs) at Colby aren’t grunt workers or lowly number-crunchers. They are scholars making serious forays into academia, developing skills and getting jumpstarts on their theses. Some even get published. Summer research is a unique opportunity—different from the research that students can do during regular semesters, when they have classes to go to, papers to write, tests to study for, clubs to meet with, events to attend, and, to be honest, parties to party at. But in the summer, it’s all about focus.
Tatenda Mahlokozera ’09 took organic chemistry his freshman year, so he might have been considered advanced to begin with—but summer took him to the next level. “I love it because summer gives you more time to do research, and that’s when chemistry really makes sense, so it’s been a good experience for me,” he said. “It’s really useful to have lab skills like this, and it’s fun too.”
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