Things I did wrong, and what I’ll be doing right.
In a few days, I’ll be beginning my master’s program in biostatistics, as well as a graduate assistantship and a research training program. I’ll also be moving to a new city and launching my personal website and blog. While it feels like I should find everything that will suddenly be on my plate in a few weeks very daunting, grad school feels like a new beginning, a chance to implement better habits and do things better than I did in the past.
In this blog post, I’ll be reflecting on a few of the most valuable lessons I learned in undergrad, mistakes I made, and some of the things I plan to do differently.
Lessons learned
1. Make room for unexpected opportunities.
I’ve been participating in a week long training as part of a scholarship for genomics research at my university. One of the professors who came to speak remarked that he had never even heard of the field or career path of biostatistics until his senior year in undergrad. My experience has been very similar.
Pursuing this field has taught me to be open to and embrace learning opportunities that may be outside of my plans or my vision for my life. Had I been too rigid about my education and career path, it’s possible that I may not have ended up here. But because I learned to have a “Just apply; the worst they can do is reject you” mentality, I’ve gotten opportunities like NSF and NIH internships and programs, and now I’m working on genomics research with very little prior experience in the field.
I would also encourage anyone reading this to apply to internships or jobs even when you feel that you’re underqualified for them (I’ve felt this way about all of the internships and programs I’ve ended up landing). You’ll be pleasantly surprised at who will favor you and say yes when you just take the chance and apply. And even when you don’t get an opportunity, the interview process is a very valuable learning experience in itself.
2. Be teachable.
Merriam-Webster defines ‘teachable’ as: “capable of being taught” and “apt and willing to learn”. As students or early-career professionals, it’s impossible to have everything figured out, try as we might. It seems like I’m always lacking; I don’t have enough experience, I don’t know that programming language or I’m not available for that position. But in my experience, many employers value people who are teachable. You may not know everything, but be willing to learn, to be taught, and even to make mistakes. I’ve gotten opportunities that, in my view, I wasn’t very qualified for. But because I was willing to apply myself, I did well and made a good impression.
Even if you don’t meet the requirements perfectly, or even barely when it comes to an internship or job opportunity, if you are flexible, often times, employers will be flexible too.
Mistakes made
1. Negative commuter student mentality
One of my biggest mistakes in undergrad was what I like to think about it ‘negative commuter student mentality’. Living off campus can really make it difficult to be fully immersed in the college experience, and as a result, many valuable opportunities can pass commuter students by. But the solution is to make an effort to truly be involved, even if it’s difficult or inconvenient. I didn’t put in that effort because I didn’t really know any better, and by the time I did, I felt it was too late. As an introvert, home was the place where I could be by myself and escape social anxiety and the general mental burden of college life. As a result, I would be really quick to head home and I loathed staying on campus for several hours after my last class of the day ended, just to attend an extracurricular that was barely two hours long. My education and career path is turning out much better than expected, but even so, I feel like I missed out on valuable things like leadership opportunities, professional development conferences, and networking opportunities because I wasn’t as involved on campus as I should have been.
What I’m doing differently this time
1. Documenting my journey Looking back, there were several cool and interesting things I accomplished or participated in in undergrad that I barely have any documentation of. There’s only so much we can say to communicate our achievements in job interviews. It helps immensely to have a record of everything you’ve done; after all, actions do speak louder than words. From now on, I’ll be making full use of things like my LinkedIn, my website, and any other platform I can think of that can be used to document my professional achievements. Not only will this be useful in the job search process, but I want to be able to look back an everything I’ve done.
2. Overcoming mathophobia
Mathophobia is defined as “…an irrational and impeditive dread of mathematics.” Although I don’t believe that I suffer from the actual clinical disorder, I’ve definitely felt those feelings very intensely throughout my education. I vaguely remember it happening for the first time in 4th grade, and from then on I rarely got A’s on my 7th grade math quizzes and exams, I refused to take AP calc in high school even though I had the opportunity to do so, and I became a calc 1 dropout in undergrad (I ended up retaking it and passing). But despite these negative experiences, I can also remember times where I’ve done very well at math. But those achievements have been overshadowed in my memory by the times I’ve failed at math, accompanied by feelings of frustration, helplessness, feeling stupid, incapable and questioning my intelligence.
I’m choosing to dispose of the belief that I can’t excel at math, especially math like calc 3 or linear algebra. For me, I have no choice but to put that belief to death, because I have to take the math courses I mentioned, and other challenging ones, if I want to give myself the choice of pursuing a phd. This leads into my next point:
3. Mindset
In the mistakes section, I mentioned having a “Just apply; the worst they can do is say no” mindset. I want to implement more belief like that in my everyday thought life. A lot of us struggle with impostor syndrome, but we have to remember that we haven’t achieved the things we have by accident. No one (or very, very few people) gets into grad school by sheer luck, coincidence and vibes. If you’ve achieved anything in your education or career, it’s because you put in the effort and discipline required to do so, and you’re capable of going even further and achieving more should you choose to do so.
That is the type of mindset I’d like to continue to develop. Many of us have heard or read this quote by the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
Believing good things about yourself and your capabilities is crucial to your success.
Undergrad was a huge learning opportunity. I’m grateful for all of the mistakes I made and lessons I learned, because now that I know better, I’ll do better going forward.
Thanks for reading,
Abigail
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