Yesterday I went to the Monsanto at Creve Coeur. That is where their regulatory division is centered and I ended up spending most of the day with Anirudh. He is in charge of making sure that their corn meets all of the regulations for the different countries that they have customers in.
He showed me a lot of how their company is structured and the “pipeline” that their products have to go through. They end up spending millions of dollars on products that end up failing at some point of the process, or get weeded out. There’s an incredible amount of work that goes into each one and around 1% of the products that they start off with make it to the market. He also showed me the countries where they grow and then countries that are their buyers, either of GMOs or breeding plant.
We also talked about my future, college and beyond, a fair amount. Anirudh was a college professor for a while when he was younger and he gave me some advice about interacting with professors, and keeping in mind what I might want to do as a profession while I was pursuing my degree in college.
Then at lunch, people were pretty nice and teased with me some. It was cool though because I had a question about what I was supposed to do and they helped me out, while having a little bit of fun too.
This morning, I took the AP History test and that was fun. I didn’t drink enough coffee in the morning ’cause I was rushed, but I think it was okay. I actually really enjoyed responding to the short answer questions, which I normally don’t like as much as the essay questions.
Next week, I’m moving onto working with Coach Frye’s company. I’m excited! This week was fun, though it was crazy to go to a different place every day, pretty much. There was a lot of trying to find where I was allowed to park, but that only really happened with Monsanto. Anyways, I learned a LOT about lab science and other fields that you can go into with a science degree, as well as getting to work with kids and clean closets. It was a full and diverse week.