The spring semester presented new academic and personal challenges for the student. They took courses with different professors that required adjusting their study habits. Their research intensive course involved hands-on lab work and projects in groups. This included projects in areas like drug discovery and water quality testing. Keeping an organized lab notebook and bringing it to every workshop proved challenging but helped develop their sense of responsibility. The student's story about science won first place in a writing competition. Overall, the semester provided opportunities for self-improvement and consideration of future career goals, and they completed each challenge with pride and success.

1. Reflective Essay Spring 2013
The spring semester has been a close for a challenging new chapter in my university life.
I learned much, academically and as a person. New courses with different professors challenged
me to adjust my study habits and schedules. Over all, my sense of responsibility was challenged
even further than the previous semester.
This semester’s course in RISE was more hands on than the last one; we learned different
lab techniques and were able to perform research projects in groups of pairs with different
mentors. Of the many workshops that we participated in, some included: In Silico research
(computer research) for discovering new drugs, mycobacteriophage research, and water quality
testing among other projects and opportunities. For the presentations of my participation in these
workshops, follow this link: http://portfoliogustavomartinez.wordpress.com/presentations/. For
written reports of these works, follow this link:
http://portfoliogustavomartinez.wordpress.com/reports/.
These workshops allowed us the opportunity of keeping record and maintaining
information in a laboratory notebeook. keeping such a record is not as easy as it would seem,
since keeping organized notes and remembering to bring the notebook to every workshop is a
challenge to one’s responsibility. Also, in this course we were offered the opportunity to
participate in a competition for writing creatively with science. We were to use one of the
seminars we participated in as inspiration. My story, Plight of a Broken Mind, was the one to win
first place in this competition. This story can be viewed in the following link:
http://portfoliogustavomartinez.wordpress.com/presentations/.
This semester has been another great opportunity to challenge myself to better myself. Also, it
has been another opportunity to consider my career goals for the future. All in all, despite all the
educational and personal challenges, I believed myself to have faced each challenge with all my will and
strength and finished them with personal pride and success.