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Archives Fall 2000
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Full Time
Biologist Juliana Sampson logs many hours in both the lab and the classroom

Photo by Will Owens

She rises when the first roosters crow and doesn’t return home until the Wake County sky is shadowed with dusk. But Juliana Sampson is not a farmer. She is a doctoral student in the Carolina Department of Biology. The hours she spends away from her Apex home are long — she typically puts in 50-55 hours per week, including Saturdays — but they are also rewarding. "If you talk to someone who has never been to graduate school, they think you are just going to classes, like an undergraduate. But there is not a lot of time to relax. You are working five days a week for 10 or 11 hours. Then you come in Saturdays for anywhere from 5 to 8 hours. It’s definitely not for everyone," explains Juliana. Despite the long hours, Juliana finds her daily schedule both varied and exciting. She spends most of the day in Fordham Hall, dividing her time between teaching and research.

As part of her teaching responsibilities, Juliana attends Professor Alison Hill’s undergraduate biology class along with her own students on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 to 10:45. Juliana explains, "This class contains a couple hundred people, so the students break into groups of 20 to meet with a TA like me in what’s known as a ‘recitation class.’ Basically, we review difficult concepts, go over problems together, and address specific questions about what’s going on in the larger class."

Juliana teaches four one-hour recitations that meet every Monday. In addition, she holds office hours on Fridays and conducts two-to-three-hour study sessions for her students prior to major exams. Juliana finds teaching very fulfilling. "When I first came here, I wanted to go into industry, but the experiences that I’ve had teaching have made me reconsider."

Juliana is excited about her research as well. Specifically, she’s interested in a reproductive process among bacteria known as conjugation. The transfer of genes during conjugation often enables bacteria to acquire antibiotic resistance. Juliana is working to understand how conjugation starts, so that "down the road, that information could be used to keep the bacteria from gaining these resistance genes." Along with conducting daily experiments for her own project, Juliana stays abreast of her peers’ research by attending weekly seminars and lab meetings.

After arriving home around 8 p.m., Juliana often spends the evening studying for the oral exams that she’ll take this fall or preparing for the lab meetings in which she presents her work. She admits that it’s very draining. "The amount of time that you put in just wears you out. When I came here, I wasn’t prepared for graduate school. I knew it was going to be tough, and I knew I was going to have to devote time to it, but it really was not anything close to what I imagined."

But the exhaustion that Juliana feels when her head finally hits the pillow is not without a certain sweetness. She enjoys her life at Carolina and has especially enjoyed getting to know her coworkers in the lab. She also has several outside interests — church, a steady relationship, dancing, movies, and art museums. As a Lumbee Indian, Juliana enjoys attending pow-wows, especially the annual Lumbee homecoming in her hometown of Pembroke. This fall she hopes to join Carolina’s American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES).

But for now, school is foremost among Juliana’s priorities. She explains, "My doctorate will allow me the freedom to shape my goals and decide my future." Her future is bright, but it is her present daily accomplishments — research, teaching, and assisting her colleagues — that make Juliana such a valuable part of the Carolina community.

- John Adrian

 

© 2002, The Graduate School, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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