Breakthroughs - in Science and in Life

Internships are no easy feats for anyone seriously engaged in the work experience. I learned that firsthand when, due to a 45 minute commute to the lab every morning, I had to wake up at 4 a.m. to make it to the drosophila melanogaster on time. These drosophila are not, contrary to what one might imagine, some rare endangered byproduct of the proliferation of men, but rather the simple fruit fly. However, my lab PI, the principal investigator, had decreed that the care of these fruit flies took precedent over my sleep, so at 4:30 a.m. in the morning, when perhaps other highschool underclassmen were curled up in their sheets, I had to brave the streets of New York all for the sake of flies. As unromantic as this may sound, I enjoyed it. Back then, we were experimenting with fruit flies and sequencing their genome to find various behavioral pathways. In layman's words, we could find out how exactly fruit flies - and basically any other animal - ticked. As we were making scientific breakthroughs in the lab, though, I was making personal breakthroughs of my own; prior to this, the concept of a 4 a.m. had never occurred to me before. By pushing myself harder for the internship, I learned the value of productivity.
Now, years pass, and we are still making scientific breakthroughs. A recent article I read told me of a "printer" for human flesh, organs, and so on. This scientific breakthrough occurred at Wake Forest University, home to some of the most advanced bioengineering worldwide. One thing occurs to me, though, while I am reading the article; perhaps hundreds, no thousands of interns trudged the 4 a.m. walk to make these discoveries possible. Through toil and progress, this is how we achieve our breakthroughs, in science or in life.