What have you learned this semester? How have your interests developed?
This semester has been quite a learning curve for me. I explored career interests broadly my freshman year, but my goal for this semester was to narrow them down. I would say I was pretty successful. Although I don’t know exactly what I will be doing after graduation, and although there is a very real possibility that this will change, I have the clearest general idea about my professional future I have ever had.
I reflected on the Coursera course I took in Skills 4, so I won’t repeat what I learned from that. I will just highlight that mind mapping and putting my career interests into a strict, realistic organizer greatly helped me hold myself accountable on what a feasible career for me is.
This course also “forced” me to become better at talking to others about my interests and goals. Having meetings with Suzanna for this course turned into wonderful hour-long conversations about my interests and the press. We came up with some very interesting projects and avenues for me to explore at the press that better reflect my interests and still allow me to work on the responsibilities I have already established there. It also helped me to better create a pitch or summary of myself so that when I attended the Psychonomics conference, I felt a little less nervous talking to people at poster sessions or after their presentations. Most greatly, this course has taught me that expressing what I want to get out of an experience isn’t something I should shy away from. I have learned that creating a strong working relationship with any mentor and/or boss I have can go a long way in my success, so I reached out to my PI to talk about new research ideas for next semester. This is something I would have been too nervous or afraid to do at the beginning of the semester, but after strengthening my communication skills at the press and learning more about myself and what I specifically want out of my lab experience, I was able to communicate that to Hilary.
My interests have definitely developed as at the beginning of this semester, the front runner in my career search was becoming a pediatric headache specialist. I now realize that that career isn’t the most feasible one given my health. After looking more at what I truly love to do (spend time with children, problem solve, and teach), I realized that education and developmental/cognitive psychology research are where my interests and strengths lie. This course has given me the space to self-reflect when I most likely would have put it on the back burner as the semester became stressful. I look forward to applying these interest further in my academics and work and to use summer opportunities, as well, to continue developing my interests.
