Most Proud: Chloramphenicol Research Paper (CHM-2510)

• What was the assignment?

The purpose of this assignment was to complete a research paper on the history, chemical structure, synthesis, and importance of an organic compound.

• Why did I choose this direction?

I chose to investigate chloramphenicol because it was a pioneering compound in the field of synthetic antibiotics. Although it is being phased out of healthcare usage, it still presented an interesting story with the added challenge of deciphering relatively old journals to determine the exact synthesis steps.

• How did the completion of this assignment impact me?

I avoided this project for a long time because it seemed like a daunting task, but once I had started I realized that I found it quite enjoyable to take a deep dive into the specifics of a single chemical compound. This was actually the assignment that made me decide to double major in chemistry, which I feel has better prepared me for graduate school even though I had no intentions of going to graduate school at the time.

Honors: Dengue Fever Elimination Proposal (HNR-2404)

• What was the assignment?

We were tasked with developing a plan to eliminate a neglected tropical disease using existing protocols and our knowledge of the disease, culture of afflicted areas, and scientific resources available.

• Why did I choose this direction?

I chose to focus on Dengue Fever because my family is from the Philippines where Dengue is a serious issue. I also wanted to bring light to some of the sociopolitical factors that may either present challenges or unique solutions in gaining public support.

• How did the completion of this assignment impact me?

The actual completion of this project was less impactful to me compared to the reaction I received from my teacher. After reading it, he pulled me aside and strongly encouraged me to pursue a PhD. This interaction is what gave me the confidence to decide I wanted to go to graduate school.

Surprise: Undergraduate Research Presentation (EXS-4111)

• What was the assignment?

This presentation was meant to report the results and analysis of a research study I had conducted under the guidance of my mentor.

• Why did I choose this direction?

My goal in creating the presentation was to communicate information about my study to people that did not have the same background in biochemistry or human physiology.

• How did the completion of this assignment impact me?

Presentations have never been my strong suit, especially when they were on topics with which I wasn't 100% confident. Despite several years working within the same research field, there are still a lot of things that I'm unsure or unaware of, but giving the presentation and having people ask questions that showed they understood what I said gave me a lot more confidence in my ability to communicate complicated information.

As it has been an ongoing part of my college career from freshman year, undergraduate research has heavily influenced and been influenced by all my assignments and experiences. Related to the chloramphenicol paper, my presentation was a juxtaposition of the type of research involved. While the presentation required active data collection and study design, the research paper was mainly literature review. Although the work put into both the research paper and proposal were based in literature review, the proposal was more of an extension rather than an elaboration because it stretched from scientific literature into socioeconomic dynamics. Similarly, the dengue fever elimination proposal was a different type of research from that of the presentation, but I prefer to think of the presentation as an elaboration of the proposal. The self-confidence I built writing the proposal made a huge contribution towards my decision to do an oral presentation rather than a poster presentation. Represented through these three artifacts were many assignments, events, and experiences that have shaped my character development throughout college. After reflecting on these artifacts it's much easier to see from an outside perspective a person with values of hard work, self-confidence, and equity, motivated by challenge and personal growth.

Continuous

From a young age I’ve always enjoyed the school setting. My mom homeschooled me for pre-school, I played school with all my stuffed animals, and played school with my cousins and younger brother. And I took playing school pretty seriously. I would make worksheets with answer keys, have my students raise their hands and sit criss-cross applesauce, and every school session had a detailed teacher’s plan made ahead of time. So, starting in fifth grade, if anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say very proudly that I wanted to be a teacher. I wasn’t sure exactly what grade or what subject I wanted to focus on, but my goal to teach was clear from the beginning.

In high school I spent a lot of my time in classes explaining things to my peers, and I invested the majority of my extracurricular time in marching band. While it wasn’t a traditional classroom setting, I was still able to teach as a section leader. Whether it was how to march, play music, or memorize things I played an active role in teachership through leadership. It helped me gain a lot of confidence speaking in front of larger crowd, making decisions that benefited the group, and working on a team with other leaders. These were skills that I continued to develop in college marching band where I, along with 3 others, was responsible for planning, teaching, and troubleshooting band camp.

Outside of extracurriculars in college, I quickly found a way to continue teaching by working as a private tutor and supplemental instructor. I really enjoyed helping students and coming up with new ways to explain material. Finding the right fit and seeing the information “click” after a long struggle was always extremely gratifying. Additionally, after a year of undergraduate research, I had the opportunity to act as a mentor in the lab to the new members. It was a very different from the classroom setting in that it had a unique combination of hands-on demonstrations, conversational instruction, and lecture-style lessons. Being able to coach a student through experimental techniques and background knowledge to the point that they had two scientific publications was an experience that I decided I wanted to continue in my career.

The combination of these experiences solidified my desire to pursue a PhD so that I can teach at the university level. I’m currently on track to attend graduate school in the fall where I’ll be able to grow my base knowledge and my repertoire of laboratory techniques. This will allow me to conduct my own research in the future and gain more teaching experience through graduate assistantships and mentoring undergraduates.

Discontinuous

I didn’t go to pre-school. Instead, my mom ordered some workbooks, and she homeschooled me. We had English, math, science, history, art, music, and P.E. time every day, and I loved every second of it. Obsessed with my mom (rightfully so), I decided that I wanted to be a doctor like her. So, when “When I Grow Up” Day rolled around in kindergarten, my mom tailored some of her old scrubs and made me mini scrubs so that I could go to school dressed like the doctor I dreamt of being.

Fast forward to high school, it was time to start thinking about colleges and start shadowing doctors and volunteer at a hospital and think about becoming a medical scribe and go to pre-med summer camps. I was feeling a lot more reluctant than younger me would have expected, and I chalked it up to not wanting to put myself out there just to find out I wasn’t good enough. So, I put everything off for a couple years. I did well in school and focused more on clubs. Junior year, I worked at UNC Rex Hospital under the VolunTEEN program and went to a summer medicine camp at Wake Forest. By senior year, I realized the thought of going to medical school and patient care wasn’t appealing at all.

Senior year was also when I took AP Literature, AP Computer Science, and biology at a community college. I loved all of them. The deep analysis of lit, problem solving in comp sci, and fundamental understanding of the world in bio. Coming into college I was faced with two decisions: (1) Should I still be pre-med? And (2) what major should I choose? In what felt like a rush and with the influence of my grandma whispering “just choose medicine” in my ear, I decided to be a pre-med science major. And by my sophomore year I was panicking about dropping pre-med. I felt like I had wasted so much time, effort, and money by being a science major if I wasn’t going into medicine. But by my junior year I stopped viewing my major as a prerequisite for medical school and fell back in love with science.

Once I revamped my motivation and curiosity, I realized that instead of being a doctor like my mom, I’ve wanted to be a teacher like my mom from the beginning. I’m not 100% sure that the path I’m on leads to a career I’ll still want to do five, ten, or fifteen years later. However, thinking back on my childhood, the best thing my mom has ever given me was the time she spent homeschooling me. She never gave me the answers and was obsessed with putting me in situations that allowed me to figure things out for myself. She never got mad at me when I got things wrong, and she always emphasized understanding why something was wrong, so I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. So, whether I dive deeper into medicine, computer science, teaching, biology, English, or any of the millions of fields out there, I’ll always carry the curiosity, love for learning, and resilience instilled in me by my mom.

Reflection

Both my continuous and discontinuous life stories contain elements of my childhood and school experiences that build the narrative of how I decided what career I want to pursue. They end with the same conclusion, but the continuous life story tends to gloss over the bumps in the road that make the discontinuous story authentic. In the continuous life story, I built a narrative of teaching and learning being present from childhood, shaping my desire to pursue a PhD. In contrast, the discontinuous story contains examples of doubts, mistakes, and hesitation that display the difficulties and/or uncertainties in the decisions I have made and experiences I have had. However, it is through these difficulties that I have developed personal characteristics which explain why I might have been drawn to particular things throughout my life. Opposed to having a narrative in the canonical form where the “end is contained in the beginning”, sitting in the discomfort of the discontinuity helped to “[discover] threads of continuity”. In other words, the development of these personal characteristics in the beginning supports the ending, but they are not in themselves the ending.

Despite living through these stories, I would say that I don’t typically tell myself either one. Through my experience with the events and artifacts listed, I tend to see and ruminate on the difficulties from the discontinuous story in a continuous manner. Because the discontinuous story is more accurate to my timeline of thoughts and events, it’s what’s housed in my head, but I don’t necessarily have the self-reflective conclusions of thematic patterns accompanying the narrative. However, these conclusions are accessible through active reflection like journaling or self-talk.

The process of writing applications for graduate school and other related fellowships has also been very helpful in recognizing those patterns. And after several hours of contemplation debating how to best display who I am to admissions committees, I can say without a doubt that I prefer the discontinuous story. Even though it has aspects of my academic and career journey of which I’m not the most secure, they give the narrative a human essence and make it a “reflection of [my] life as it [has] really [been] lived”. In addition to being more relatable and realistic to any audience reading my story, the act of writing it helped me to better understand both myself and my intrinsic motivators. In contrast, the continuous story doesn’t have room for character development because there are no challenges to overcome when the story is required to build to a predetermined happy ending.

Because the purpose of the ePortfolio is to display who I am as a person outside the accomplishments on my resume, I think the discontinuous story is a more advantageous representation. While I composed my life story retrospectively, I think that the arrangement and reflection of selected works on the ePortfolio should be prospective. In other words, I think the best way to communicate how sections of the ePortfolio and artifacts within them connect to my discontinuous life story is to reflect on how they contribute to where I would like them to take my story in the future, as well as how I can already see their impact.

Identify a civic or professional goal and an audience that will help you achieve your goal. It could be a specific job or graduate school, an organization, a group that shares your interests, etc. Create a one-page analysis of your audience’s values, beliefs, goals, and interests and comment on how you can tailor your ePortfolio to showcase these values.

My career goals involve getting a PhD in the biomedical sciences, working in clinical research or other industry positions, and teaching at the University level while conducting scientific research. To do these things, I need to be accepted into graduate school first. All applicants have a CV or resume that list their grades, accomplishments, publications, and experiences, however, these lack the ability to convey information about personal characteristics that could be the difference between a good and bad fit candidate. While personal statement and other admissions essays offer the chance to display some personality, questions are often phrased in such a way that prioritize past research experiences and future goals. Therefore, the ePortfolio offers a substantial medium to showcase my personality, motivations, and non-research related work.

Even though other aspects of the admissions process have opportunities to show off research experience, publications, and experimental techniques, it is still important to include these things in an ePortfolio catered towards PhD program admission. However, unlike personal statements or CV’s, the ePortfolio does not have a word or page count limiting what I can say about these experiences. So, to differentiate from the information on these other platforms, I think it would be most beneficial if I were to include descriptions of my personal experiences during the completion of each project. This way, I can showcase the techniques I learned, observations I made about the research process, as well as my ability to identify and overcome hurdles in a scientific setting. Additionally, commentary on the process will allow me to make statements about how my past work has influenced my future goals. To do these things, I will make a page on my ePortfolio dedicated to research with a description of each project I’ve been a part of, as well as my commentary. To showcase my ability to communicate complicated and hyper-specific ideas, I will make sure to write in a manner that is scientifically accurate but accessible for readers of all backgrounds.

To add a more human element to my application, I will also include a personal page that has information about my hobbies, extracurriculars, and other interests. When working in a graduate program, interpersonal relationships are extremely important, and they can be the difference between a life-altering amazing experience and the worst five years of your life. This not only impacts me, but also the mentors with whom I work. So, to ensure that I’m a good fit for the program and lab cultures, I will do my best to create the most authentic depiction of my interests and values.

Finally, I plan to include a selected works page that features projects, writing samples, and other examples of my work throughout my undergraduate studies that showcase my ability to communicate using different styles of writing. Scientific writing can often become very academic (almost snobbish) in a way that’s difficult for people without science backgrounds to understand. In a world that is becoming increasingly focused on effective communication of scientific findings, it’s important that I display this ability. And similar to my research page, I plan to annotate my selected works such that my audience can know what the goal of the assignment was, as well as what I got out of it.