The Beginning

Well hello everyone and welcome back to the Resilience in STEM podcast. I hope you all had a wonderful end to the summer break. At this point, I think everyone should be back in school and starting to relocate back to campus. For me, school started on August 21. My internship at Berkeley ended around two weeks before that and I was readjusting the week before school. Now, as I’m recording this (it’s the second day of school for me) I feel it’s been pretty nice so far. I haven’t gotten any assignments so I can’t tell you how I’m going to be overall feeling this semester. But it’s been good. I can work on some other things to make my life easier and I can sleep a lot. I’m planning to take full advantage of that. 

 

Instead of having my normal episodes where I talk heavily about information or give advice, I’m going to be switching gears this episode and explain what I’ve been doing these past few months, show where I am in the application process, and talk about what’s going on in my life. This is an opportunity for me to vent about everything and talk about some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. 

 

I wanted to kick it off with a graduate school update, but more of a venting version of it. Big updates overall are I’ve been working on a first-author paper in my lab at Texas A&M for the past two years. We submitted it right before I left for Berkeley and the day I came back it got accepted. I went through the process of a paper review and it was pretty surreal how it already got accepted. Now my main focus in the lab is kind of gone, which allows me to relax. But at the same time, it does feel a little off because when I go to the lab I have a set schedule throughout the week when going to lab. Now I don’t have to regularly go to the lab, and I often question where my place in the lab is right now. Do I ask the graduate student for work or do I simply relax (it’s quite difficult when you have been conditioned to work for many hours and now nothing)? The question of “what are my next steps?” has come up as a senior. My professor has said to focus on my applications for graduate school, but I miss the old groove of things where I go to the lab and do my experiment. That shift has been quite dramatic. A lot of what I’m going to be doing is “contract work”, meaning I get reached out by graduate students whenever they need me and do small tasks. 

 

The next thing is maybe quite obvious (especially if you’ve been listening to my past episodes) is applying to graduate school this cycle. Right now I’m in the process of finishing my base research essay and base personal statement. I’ve been getting a lot of anxiety over it. I’ve been told by a lot of people, such as professors and students, to do well. It’s also not even that, it’s also internal pressure that I also want to do well for myself. I know I am capable of going out there and achieving my dreams, but at the same time I have to tell a really good story in my essays, or else I won’t get the chance for an interview. I know I have all the extracurriculars and the research experience, but I need to translate all of that into 1-2 essays. It’s really important because every single word you write matters and you need to be cautious about what words you use. So that’s been my experience with it so far with realizing how important my essays are in this process. I’m kind of finishing up the first draft, but I don’t plan on submitting it until the deadline. It’s also been nice to see how I’m progressing from when I started in the middle of the summer. Now I need to dedicate more time to editing and refining my essays. I also need to set up my application portals, which is something I need to do this weekend. It’s been on my mind, but I keep worrying about forgetting a small detail. It feels pretty stressful, but I’m trying to finish my first draft so when I’m editing I can send it to a ton of people. 

 

Another thing for my graduate school update is the last episode I talked about fellowships and scholarships. In the beginning, I mentioned the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP). This can help fund your first three years of graduate school and it’s an overall great opportunity. I thought I was going to also complete this application, but I decided I was not going to apply this cycle. Here’s my reason why (I feel like I have to keep rationalizing this to myself). I’m applying to 13 graduate programs. So thinking about that, I have to ensure that my essays are top-notch. To do that I have to heavily dedicate myself. When you’re watching the admissions committee decide between two candidates, they won’t look at my NSF GRFP application. They will instead look at the application I sent to the program, specifically the essays. In addition, I feel a lot of my research is very translational, which includes making treatments and looking at disease models. That’s not fulfilling the NSF GRFP mission statement. I kind of feel until I get placed into a graduate program and then a lab, I’ll have a clearer idea of what type of research I will be studying. From there, I can decide if the research I am doing falls better with the NSF GRFP mission. So definitely this cycle I won’t be applying for the grant, but that doesn’t mean the door is entirely closed. I still have a chance to apply during the first or second year of graduate school. I already started outlining the fellowship and asked current fellows for their essays. I feel either way, I have a good starting point on how I would write these essays. 

 

Overall, the lessons I’ve learned thus far have been to not stretch myself too thin through the application process because I’ll have to balance extracurriculars, school, my role in my research ab, and applying to graduate school. At this point. I have to do well and I know I can do well. I also learned that I have to be kind to myself in this process. I’m mentally preparing myself for rejections because I tend to take rejections a little hard. Once I submit my applications, I know I will get a couple of rejections. It’s natural for every applicant to get rejected, no matter how successful they are. It’s not like I want rejections, but I realize that each program is looking for something different and I may not fill in that mold. Learning to be comfortable with myself and being kind to myself, especially when setting my boundaries throughout this application cycle, is going to benefit me in the long run. At the end of the day, I also really want to do well for myself and I feel a lot of other people have the same struggle with the same things as I do. But it’s going to take doing the things I said before that will show me what I’m capable of. 

 

So that’s my little graduate school spiel. Now getting into my senate work. I currently serve as the Chair of Academic Affairs, which mean I work on a lot of student success policy (which helps diversity and inclusion efforts) and create academic opportunities. At the moment I have been working on a lot of projects, such as automatic readmission, especially for those who want to take religious gap years, and advisor appreciation events. It’s an interesting feeling that I have to move forward and leave my final mark with this work. In addition, if you know Texas, the state has been experiencing a setback in diversity and inclusion. Currently, all Texas public universities are not allowed to use state funds for diversity offices. So essentially this puts a lot of the resources and support on students instead of administrators. It does make it quite difficult because underrepresented students, like myself, came to school for the academics. But now, underrepresented students have to also fight for past resources. This has personally affected the work I do in Student Success. A lot of the projects I did before are either sitting in a corner collecting dust or just gone. It’s kind of sad to see that a lot of progress was made. Now I ask myself how I can change academic opportunities for the better, especially with all of these changes in Texas politics. It’s insane how policies are affecting higher education to this degree and I’m living through it. 

 

But overall, my thoughts have been that I want to make a statement, especially since it’s my senior year. If I’m going to do something, I need to do it now or at least until next semester. I say this when it’s only the second day of school for me. I’ve had people tell me, “Angelina, it’s the second day of school. You can probably wait to do this later”. I guess I could, but I feel I have a lot of potential success on some of the projects I am doing and I want to leave my mark at the end of this. I also want to finish on a high note. I know a lot of people in the Senate start working on projects and they don’t finish or some part of their project doesn’t fully work out. I want to make sure when I finish, I want to be. When my time is done in the senate, I want to visually see all the work I was able to do. I keep telling myself affirmations to keep going. 

 

With ambassadors, It’s a little more relaxed. Recently I’ve been appointed as the Engineering honors ambassador director. It’s a nice step up and it allows me to help shape the program. I get to plan events and get to know the other ambassadors a lot better. Overall, it’s been a great time. It’s less volunteering at events and more getting into the organization, which I highly enjoy. 

 

With undergraduate research ambassadors, I’m continuing with the program and practicing my science communication. I do feel it’s really important because if you do research and can’t communicate with those who don’t have the same background then no one is going to understand it and society cannot advance that way. I feel being part of the ambassador program helps me show students the impacts of research and the potential for student success at Texas A&M. This has reaffirmed my desire to mentor students, tell them about my research, and show them the resources I picked up along the way. It does feel like a ‘final shots’ moment where I have a limited amount of events to attend. When I leave, I don’t plan on frequently coming back to Texas A&M. I don’t plan on applying to a program at Texas A&M. So the knowledge I acquired about Texas A&M resources won’t help me too much once in graduate school. It would help in the undergraduate research perspective when mentoring students. But the majority of resources I know are particular to Texas A&M. I want to focus on mentoring students and teaching the new generation of ambassadors. 

 

With my two extracurriculars, I’m aware that things are coming to an end. I know I am saying this, but I’m graduating in May. Weirdly, I'm in my final year and I now have to act on the things I said I would do. It’s a great way to help students in the future. Especially for the senate, I know I won’t be the academic affairs chair next year. So it’s a good time for me to develop my committee, help them to get to know each other, and find the next chair. 

 

So this is a short episode and a rant on where I am now mentally. I am at the beginning of the graduate application cycle. So the future episodes may be more of a vlog style. Overall my biggest challenge has been telling my story. Which events am I going to highlight or not include? I also have to make sure every word counts. That’s where my mind is at the moment. Even though it’s the first week, I do have to keep in the back of my mind that how my life is right now will probably not be the same later in the semester. I want to set good limits on balancing school, extracurriculars, and applications. I’ve been told this semester, especially writing the applications, tends to be difficult. But the spring semester does get better due to the opportunity to travel and finish your classes. I hear it does get better, but right now I’m setting my expectations for myself this semester.