My Summer as a Research Assistant

During my four years at college I held many different summer jobs. I sold bagels, worked at a hot dog stand, and was a research assistant for two seasons. Though I didn’t care much for the food service industry, I did very much enjoy working as a research assistant in my field of study.

The one thing that was a little strange that I worked with two different graduate students for my last two summers, though it ended up that their studies where very similar. I was able to apply the knowledge and skills that I learned in the first summer with the study done in the second.

The first summer, we were studying the meaning of various tribal tattoos in cultures around the world. It was interesting to learn the meaning and significance of the many different types of tattoos that were done and how similar they were, even if the cultures were around the world from each other. We did a bit of traveling to different countries and interviewed a lot of people – it was an excellent opportunity to see the world.

During the second summer, we did a study on the many religious tattoos from the major world religions. It was interesting that there were many cross tattoos that were also found in the tribal study from the previous summer. Though we didn’t travel that much, I was able to apply some of the findings from the previous year to the research of this project.

Though I do research projects on my own now, it was the skills that I learned from those two summers as a research assistant that have led me to the career that I have today.