BSD INTERNSHIP REPORT
The choice of pursuing a research practice (internship focused on research) abroad during my MSc journey felt quite natural to me. I am motivated to continue my career in nutrition science, and I appreciate the opportunity to challenge myself further with research processes after completing my thesis. During the MSc course I learned a lot of theory regarding animal nutrition, but I was still missing an immersive experience of research in the field. The research practice project was arranged to meet my wish of working on in vitro gas production systems. I have learned the theory behind those systems but I could not have a practical experience. I was glad when the department of animal nutrition at Università degli Studi di Milano (UniMI) offered me the project on the biscuit-based former food, as it also aligns with my interest in studying sustainability in ruminant feeding management. I strongly believe that making the feed industry more sustainable is a key factor to reduce the environmental impact of ruminant farming, and I want to pursue a career towards this ambitious goal.
During the proposal phase, I experienced for the first time the designing phase of a project. It was exciting and scary to have the freedom to develop the experimental design to achieve certain research goals. I had the opportunities to arrange a lot on my own, which gave me the chance to learn a lot about how in vitrosystems work, rather than just execute the trial or study the topic for a course. I learned how complex finding a balance between my high expectations for the research and the practical limitations of the laboratory work is. During my time there, I also had many discussions about both in vitro systems in general. I am glad that I was often invited to resonate with the team on how to manage the trials and how to set up the systems with continuous culture in vitro systems.
In addition, personally conducting all the laboratory work strengthened my problem solving and my management skills, in a way that could not be possible during my regular studies. I gained a lot of practical skills, and now I feel much more confident in taking responsibility regarding lab work. In particular, I had to learn how to schedule all the activities according to my own needs. I am also glad that I had this opportunity to learn how to deal with the stress given by practical limitations. I believe this experience prepare me for facing the issues that may occur during my future work either in research or in industry. During the regular studies, the lab work was quite limited, and my thesis was almost entirely focused on in vivo procedure. Therefore, I benefited from the research practice activities to learn more about all the aspects of lab work, and now I feel much more prepared for a job in feed science.
This experience abroad also helped me achieving some personal learning goals. In particular, I aimed to maintain good communication with the stakeholders and coordinate their needs or preferences to conduct the project smoothly. During my MSc journey I already had occasions to build up communication and coordination skills and the research practice experience was a great opportunity to test them. I found it relatively easy to maintain clear communication with my WUR supervisor. I enjoyed creating a structure for the weekly update, always including a self-reflection next to the work update. It helped me reflect on what I should communicate, and it was a nice way to keep track of my progress. Eve more, the UniMI team trusted me to plan my lab work autonomously, self-solving the daily issues connected to that, and even organising and supervising the work for a BSc student. During my time there, my personal approach shifted a lot from asking “I believe there is or there will be this issue, what should I do?”, to communicating “I have this problem and I thought about solving it in this way, do you agree?”. In that sense, the research practice was a great, but challenging, occasion to learn from a different working environment.
Overall, I can say that I gained a lot of confidence and independence in decision making and lab work management. As said initially, I felt a strong connection between my MSc journey, this research practice and my potential future career. I want to stay in keep studying and working in the animal nutrition field, and this experience confirmed and solidified this dream.
To conclude, I believe that everything I learned will be incredibly helpful for my potential career in feed science. This research practice strengthened the knowledge and the skills acquired during my MSc journey, and strongly contributed to making me feel ready for future challenges.