About Me

I am currently a full time student attending IUPUI. I am a junior majoring in Biomedical Engineering and am hoping to earn a math minor by the time I graduate. I chose Biomedical engineering as my major because I have always loved math and science and have always wanted to use my knowledge to help people and design something to better the world in terms of technology. Biomedical engineering was the perfect way I could mix these two interests and use them to display my academic specialties at the same time.

Teamwork

Teamwork is an essential skill needed for a group of people to complete almost any task. Through my countless interactions with others in school and group settings such as being in a robotics club, working various forms of jobs, volunteer work, projects and more, I was able to develop many skills. These skills included teamwork, independent work, responsibility, professionalism, communication, time management, organization, deadline orientation, adaptability, problem solving, leadership, public speaking, openness, active listening, and empathy.

Some of my pervious experiences that have taught me about team work include being in a robotics team. Each year, we were given a set of criteria and things the robot needed to do and we had a 2 month deadline. The team would split up into 3 main groups including programming, strategy, and building. Each of these 3 groups were then further divided and had their own roles for the robot. I was a builder and was the leader of the wiring group. Being a leader and having to work with other groups taught me what team work was. Our entire team as a whole had to work hard so that we could complete the robot for the 2 month deadline and also have the robot meet the requirements to do well in competitions.

As for this year and my time in LHSI, I definitely think that I expanded my teamwork skills because there was a lot of group work during my experience at LHSI. Firstly, when I was given a task to do at my site, it was often times with another intern or with a supervisor. With another intern, we would always divide and conquer the work to make sur we got our task done on time. We would also make sur we both understood what we were doing and if not, we would ask questions or teach one another. For example, another intern that I worked with had already done gel electrophoresis and had the protocol already written out. She explained the process to me and let me take notes. She then worked with me so that I could learn how to conduct gel electrophoresis on my own. Once I got it down, we would divide the work when given a large number of samples. I would make the gel as she prepared the samples. By doing so, we used teamwork to get our work done on time. I have been a communicating and open team member for as long as I can remember and this year I learned that teamwork can even include teaching one another how to do something and working together on it rather than just splitting up work. This has helped me see things more professionally in which as an engineer, I will always need to be working in teams and in groups.

Additionally, my site has 3 undergrad interns through LHSI including me. We were given our own topics to present about for our showcase but were instructed to combine our presentations into one because our presentations were all over the same study. Normally, when working on a presentation with others, we all make one presentation and present it together. For us, we all made our own presentations and needed to come up with a way to combine them all while maintaining a nice flow when we transition to the next persons presentation. We also needed to decide who was presenting first and what order would work best. This experience helped me realize that with good communication and being open to suggestion, I can easily make my own work and integrate it with others work to create a well made presentation.

My experiences and skills

Jobs:

Kumon Tutor (2019-2020) - Graded class work and homework for grades K-12 and also data entered grades
Upaint Pottery Studio (2020-2021) - Cashier and customer needs
Panda Express (2021) - Food service, cook, and cashier
Calculus II and III TA at IUPUI (2022) - Graded quizzes and entered grades into gradebook

All of these jobs helped me gain skills of teamwork, independent work, responsibility, professionalism, communication, organization, deadline orientation, and adaptability. Each job had its own way of teaching me specific skills. For example, working at Panda Express and Upaint taught me that dealing with rude customers just proved to me that I needed to be professional. Moreover, my job at Kumon and as a TA taught me that I need to be responsible because most of this was independent work and I needed to get it done by a specific date. All of these jobs helped me with communication because I learned how to ask questions more frequently and was required to work with other when scheduling shifts.

Skills that I have mainly learned outside of LHSI during the Fall 2022 semester was entirely from my Calculus III TA position in which I was required to heavily communicate and also also learn to manage my time better. The Fall 2022 semester was by far my hardest and busiest semester I have ever had. On top of being a full time student, I worked in my LHSI site and was also a Calculus III ta in which I graded weekly quizzes and midterms. Being as busy as I was, it was sometimes hard to get the quizzes graded on time but I knew I had to still push myself to take out the time to grade them. As a student, I dislike when Ta's grade my assignments late because I really want to know how I did. With this in mind I tried to manage my time better so that I could grade the student's quizzes on time. Additional to this, I needed to communicate with the professor I was grading for and let him know that I had delays in grading. Improving these skills helped me push myself to get my work done in a more time efficient manner.

As I wrap up my LHSI experience in Spring 2023, I look back and see how much I have grown in this year. I really enjoyed my time in LHSI while learning a great deal about research and building many meaningful relationships. While being an intern, I learned the proper methods in which research is done and how I can apply that to the main goal. I learned that research is essential in medical development and that researches put in a lot time, effort, and work into what they are truly passionate about. Being surrounded by people like this, I find myself being more motivated to see how I can take my BME skills and use them to advance medical technology. Although I have learned many valuable lessons, I still do have a long way to go before I become a professional. LHSI was my first experience with a professional setting that applied to career.

Leadership:

I learned what the meaning of leadership was when I was made the leader of my robotics club wiring team. I was only a sophomore in high school and was required to lead a small group of people on how to wire our robot. I was intimidated at first because the role required me to make big decisions, have people rely on me, teach my team how to wire, and attend weekly meetings to talk about what my team accomplished. Eventually, I got the hang of things and became a lot more confident in my work. Through this I learned responsibility, communication, teamwork, and problem solving which are key skills that a leader possesses.

Additional to this, I expanded my leadership skills this Fall 2022 semester, being in a lab group of 3. Initially, our group started off with 4 members, but one member left in the middle of the semester and we needed to fill in the gap with all of the extra work we were left with. My group looked up to me to decided what portions of the lab report everyone needed to write. I was also responsible of proof reading and turning the lab reports in. I was always the one to text in our group chat and arrgange meetings and such. This also helped me with my communication skills.

Projects:

I have been part of countless projects in school both in college and high school. Overall, Projects have taught me that it can definitely be challenging to work with others especially if you do not know them. For group projects, it is required to rely on other people and with this in mind, you have to consider that not everyone works the same way you do, not everyone will get the assignment done as fast as you or way before the deadline, and it sometimes takes people longer to understand things as compared to you.

One specific experience that I can think of is when I had a group project in college in which we were paired with random people. I did not know the other people well nor did I know their work ethic, but all I knew was that I wanted to get this project done on time and get a good grade on it. We divided it into parts and me and another team member was able able to get out work done in time. The third member had not completed their part and it was already the day of when the project was due. Me and the other team member had to step up and do their part so that we did not end up getting a bad grade.

This experience taught me responsibility and that teamwork can sometimes require independent work. I also learned that managing my time was important because that helped me get both parts of the project done and let me have enough time to complete the other members part. Additionally, I learned that communication was important because if I had communicated with the third member, they might have done their part. Although I acquire teamwork skills, it can be difficult to work with others who do not have the same motivation as you. I think that I can easily work in a team but am afraid that I will need to go out of my way when a team member does not do their part.

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