As I descended through the thick, grey clouds on the final leg of my journey to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Cytometry, Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, University of Technology and Agriculture, Bydgoszez, Poland, the much ingrained images of Eastern Europe began to race through my head. From communism to grey concrete buildings to stoic men and women following the rule of the USSR, it all was coming together at that one moment, and a question began to form in my mind. Why did I choose to spend my summer in Poland when there are so many other places that are far more exciting that I could have gone to? It would not take long for me to realize the answer to this question and to have a yet more pressing question dawn upon me. How could my perceptions of Poland have been so wrong?

Prior to my trip, I had been an undergraduate research assistant in the lab of Dr. Frans Tax, Molecular & Cellular Biology, for even longer than I had been a college student at the UA. Working in this lab has truly shaped how I view both my future and the field of science. Also, since the lab is largely concerned with molecular biology and genetics, I felt that I ought to find a foreign institute that specialized in this area as well. This is what initially pointed me towards my summer in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The lab that I would be working in was headed by Dr. Elwira Sliwinska, an expert in a widely used technique known as flow cytometry. I learned as much as I could about Dr. Sliwinska's work, and the project I would perform while I was there. Then seemingly within an instant, I was seated in seat 3B of a small, dual-propeller airplane that had just touched down in Bydgoszcz, and an announcer's voice was announcing this fact over the speakers in an odd language which I had never heard before. Sure I had tried to absorb all that Wikipedia had to offer as far as Polish history and language were concerned, but as with any truly worthwhile adventure in life, nothing could have prepared me for the real thing.

The next three months would challenge me and change me in ways that I had not expected, and when I arrived back on that same runway I had touched down on three months earlier, I felt as if I was leaving a part of myself behind. Though the surprises and mishaps of my trip were exciting and might be fun to mention here (e.g. the twenty-four hours I spent making up new growth media and sowing seeds one day because I had messed up the first batch), the small, seemingly insignificant events were what actually had the largest impact on me. That overnight train ride to Auschwitz that I had to spend standing up because the train was overcrowded, learning how to order pizza over the phone in Polish, and waking up every morning knowing that I could not just turn on the autopilot switch and make it through the day. These were all experiences that cut through the space that had accumulated between me and the excitement of life. Due to both the mishaps and accomplishments of this summer, I have a renewed sense of carpe diem, and I am motivated and empowered to follow my own passions and experience life the way it is meant to be experienced
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Though a large part of my experience was from my life outside of the lab, I also had the chance to learn and do some great science. The BRAVO! program is certainly the most challenging and rewarding program that I have gone through, not only are you expected to cope with a new environment but you also have to execute a project while you are there. I chose to research the endoreduplication patterns (i.e. the way in which the amount of DNA changes in a cell over the course of its life) in sugar beets that had been treated with different hormones, since I had learned quite a bit about genetics in my home lab, and I wanted to learn more about this interesting subtopic through my project. For instance, did you know that a cell can have significantly more than two copies of each chromosome? In fact, there can easily be sixty-four copies or more in each cell! The how and the why behind this phenomenon was what my project was all about.

I treated sugar beets with different plant hormones and then analyzed their nuclear DNA content using a flow cytometer during different stages of development. A flow cytometer is an instrument that can quickly analyze thousands of cells and give back a distribution of the endopolyploidy of each of the cells. I learned so much about this technique and the theories around why plants undergo endoreduplication in the first place that now my job is to synthesize everything so that I can give a Datablitz that does not go on for hours. In the end, I collected a great deal of data for my project, and we are working on doing statistical analyses at the present. The initial indicators are that we are going to observe some interesting changes in the endopolyploidy induced by the hormones.

We chose to study representatives of the major plant hormones (auxins, cytokinins, gibberellins, and ethylene) as well as epibrassinolide, a plant steroid hormone, due to recently established evidence for its effects on plant growth and development. While similar studies have been performed on many of these hormones before, none have looked in depth at different combinations of these hormones, nor has it been ascertained whether epibrassinolide has a true effect on endoreplication. Thus, depending on the patterns that we observe, the results of this project may even be published. I gained much from both the scientific and literature research that I did over the summer, and who knows, the best result may be yet to come if I get the opportunity to author a paper in a journal!

My experience did not end when I stepped back onto that same small airplane and understood the announcer telling us that we were about to leave for Warsaw (in Polish). I have many memories that are going to last me the rest of my life. What I had the opportunity to learn about the basics of humanity, no matter where you are in the world, have made me a more empathetic and understanding person, and I wish more people would challenge themselves in similar ways because the same result is nearly guaranteed. In short, whether it is BRAVO! or any other opportunity in life, do not talk yourself out of at least trying your best, because the benefits of actually going for it are unimaginable.

My experience would not have been possible without the generous funding of the BRAVO! program and the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant DBI 9912036). However, money can only get you there and back, but in order to survive while you are there you need the support of people who are truly committed to helping you maximize your experience. For this I would like to thank the program's director Carol Bender, my family, and Dr. Frans Tax for their advice and suggestions when I needed them the most. Lastly, the Sliwinska lab of Bydgoszcz, Poland is one of the most welcoming and educational environments that I have ever been exposed to. I wholeheartedly recommend anyone wishing to challenge themselves and learn a great deal of science in the process to apply to do their project in Dr. Sliwinska's lab. To everyone here I would like to say:
Dzi_kuj_ bardzo za twoje pomoc!

Ryan Virden, BRAVO! student, in Dr. Elwira Sliwinska's Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Cytometry, Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, University of Technology and Agriculture, Bydgoszez, Poland,