TKS Session 7: Escape Velocity

I know it says session 7 when it should say session 6, but it was Thanksgiving in Canada and I got a recording of session 6 to watch and participate in the activities on my own. A short recap, it was on synthetic biology and I might use the software they showed us, Benchling, in my focus on phage therapy!

Before we began the session properly, Sophia Dhami shared her focus presentation on regenerative medicine and how it can be applied to different cases, like Atopic Dermatitis and Psoriasis, or the dissolution of Uric Acid kidney stones.

As we proceed in the focus process, we will create focus presentations to share with our cohort what we are working on and use it as a way to get feedback, get better at presenting our work, and help us understand and become an expert in our focus by speaking about it.

My intention for this session was to walk away with a better plan for what my focus will entail, including both how and when I want to finish the next step in my focus, by using what I learned from my learn article.

In TKS, you start your focus by writing a learn article about something in your focus you are curious about. You can read mine here on phage therapy and why it’s not FDA-approved.

Today’s session was about using escape velocity to allow ourselves to think beyond our lives and what’s going on around us, while seeing what’s achievable and finding new perspectives. This thinking can create new opportunities and progress toward achieving our goals or even creating goals we didn’t think were attainable before.

We were given a workbook to fill out in four different parts to plan our focus.

The first part was looking at what we envision for the summer of 2025, which would be after TKS. Starting with this visualization helps us understand what is the best-case scenario when leaving TKS. We then were asked what would be required of us to reach this best-case scenario, specifically what would need to be done by December. This thought process started very general, but then you would have to get more specific about what those goals meant for you. For example, if you wanted to land an internship at the end of TKS, what would it be for and where would that internship be at?

Part one was fairly simple. It was about getting an understanding of what the goal is. Part two was all about planning, doing research, and building context around our focus. Some of these things included researching the major companies or universities in the field of our focus, some technical challenges, and then designing our next step for our focus (the replicate/apply).

A replicate (technical focus) or apply (scientific focus) is the step where you take what you learned from research or your learn article and then create or experiment by taking what’s out there and trying it for yourself. It can range from creating your own AI software and trying to program it yourself to detect objects, or using software online to simulate editing the genes of an organism and seeing what happens. The goal of your replicate/apply phase is to get some project-based, hands-on experience of what you’re learning.

For part two, I researched some organizations focusing on phage therapy and its research. Some organizations include the company Armata Pharmaceuticals and the UC San Diego phage therapy research team. The top challenges in my focus area are that phage therapy isn’t FDA-approved in Canada or the US, some of those obstacles include the storage and building of phage libraries, the fact that phages are really niche in what they attack and it may be hard to find specific phages for each case, and that it’s unclear if we need to have approval for every phage therapy we design (because each phage therapy that is administered is tailored to the patient and their needs), which can be time-consuming. I’m currently formulating a plan for my apply, which may have to do with simulating different gene changes in phages and what the results of that are.

Part three of the workbook is looking at mentor outreach and identification. This process involves going online to companies’ websites or searching on LinkedIn for people you think could help you in your focus in the future. Once you have a solid focus project, you can reach out to some of your selected mentors in your focus space and ask for advice, opinions, answers to some of your questions, etc. Talking to people in the space can help you get an idea of what’s actually going on in the world and how you can move forward in your project. These mentors should be like guides to helping you formulate your focus project and turn it into something that can be implemented in real life.

This part was really interesting because we got to learn how to reach out to people, and the type of meetings or encounters you can have with someone. There are two types of encounters with people you can have when meeting them for the first time:

Warm encounter: This is where someone you know introduces you to someone else or recommends you to reach out to a person. When the person you are trying to connect with has a mutual connection with you, it’s more likely for them to trust you and want to work with you because you know the same people.

Cold encounter: This is where you reach out to someone on your own, out of the blue, with no connection to them whatsoever. Sometimes, cold encounters are necessary because you may need to talk to this person, whether or not you have a connection to them. It’s recommended to get warm encounters because it’s just more likely to get engagement and response from your target person. But things can still happen, even from a cold encounter.

When reaching out to people, you need to stand out from others. For me, I can use my age to my advantage. A young 14-year-old looking at ways to get phage therapy FDA-approved through a specific project can be eye-catching. People are more willing to help out young kids with guidance and projects. Besides that, you also need to keep these messages short and to the point, whether that be including your questions in an email or straight up finishing off with “I would love to have a meeting to discuss this, when are you available?” and making it evident that you want their guidance and their opinion.

People usually assume that if they don’t get a response from someone, it's the end of the story. But no response doesn’t mean no. It’s important to have follow-up emails or chats just in case the person was busy and missed your message. You can also use the follow-up emails to keep them posted on what you’ve been working on between then.

While following up is a good practice, you need to be prepared that not everyone will respond to you or want to work with you. This shouldn’t stop you from connecting to anyone, but make sure you have backup connections in mind in case one connection doesn’t happen.

Part four of the workbook is the actual goal formation, where you take the context and what you’ve learned from parts one, two, and three to make the goals and identify your key action items in order to achieve them. We set our goals through the format of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), which help facilitate goals and task management. The format of these goals includes a committed objective, an aspirational objective, and the key results. We have two kinds of goals for now until the end of December: a personal OKR and a project OKR.

The personal OKR is a goal in TKS that can relate to a social aspect, a wellness aspect, a life aspect, etc. I’m still determining what my personal OKR will be. An example of a personal OKR would be to try and make 5 close friends after a year in TKS, or maybe an aspirational goal of having 10 close friends after TKS. Then you would list some tasks that would need to be completed to begin bonding with the people in your cohort, like setting up braindates or in-person get-togethers.

The project OKR is a goal for your focus in TKS. For this OKR, I want to set my goal on when I can finish my apply. When setting this goal, I put a committed and aspirational date to finish my apply while including key objectives that need to be done, like finding software that works for simulating editing genes of phages, experimenting and understanding what happens when we switch out specific genes of phages, and eventually trying to create an simulated phage library that includes phages and the genes that need to be modified for them to work a specific way. This is a very basic overview, but that’s the general idea.

After going through the workbook, we looked at this week’s mindset, which is third-door thinking. I was told to think of this mindset with the analogy of a nightclub. When people look at life, they see two doors in each situation.

The first door is where 90% of the population goes through. Everyone waits in line to make it past that door, and there’s no room for getting in first. They wait for the bouncer to let them in, and they might be turned away.

Then there’s the second door, where all the VIPs and top people go through. They can get in quicker, and most likely won’t be turned away by the bouncer, but this still isn’t accessible to the 90% of the population who have to go through the first door.

Everyone usually stops at second door thinking. But what we need to realize is that there is always a third door, there is always another way in. That could be jumping over the fence, sneaking through the back, or climbing through a window to get into the nightclub or VIP section. It’s the unconventional route that most people are too afraid or aren’t motivated enough to take. And once you identify that third door, you’ll see that there’s actually a fourth door, and a fifth door, and a hundredth door, and so on. The best way to think of the situation is: If getting into the nightclub was a life-or-death situation, could I get in?

If the answer is yes, then get in. Make that shot and take that path because you don’t know where it can take you.

I really enjoyed this TKS session. It was really helpful in getting to plan out my focus and I can’t wait to see where I will go from here! I also really enjoyed the third-door thinking mindset and will definitely keep it in mind! Also, check out my personal website and get a taste of what I’m working on! I’ll keep updating it regularly as new projects come in.

Photo credit: Ben Reamico