Dental Research

After a semester of mass emailing professors and waiting for a response, I have finally secured a research position in Dr. Chen's lab. In summary, I'm going to be studying oral pathogens and piecing together oral bacteria genome using PCR. I have until next Wednesday to become a pro at PCR. Dr. Aparicio should be proud of me!

It was kind of reassuring when Dr. Chen told me that with or without research, I was going to get into dental school with my stats and resume. "So why do you want to do research?", he asked. Going into dental school, there seems to be two tracks - clinical and research based. You can't say that you want to rule out the research option unless you've tried it, right?