This past week, I attended a Psychology research conference thanks to my PI, and I was able to attend seminars and poster sessions presented by researchers from all over the world. While at a poster session, I met Ariel Chavers, a PhD student at the University of Delaware, and we immediately clicked. She was presenting a poster on the importance of diversity in literature for young students, especially students of color, and this has always been an interest of mine (although not necessarily a research interest). We got to chatting about her interests in psychology, and I ended up learning a great deal about her and her research journey.
I learned that she spent a year working at a hospital doing clinical research to understand the effects of “risky” behavior in teen moms on their pregnancy before starting her PhD. I was intrigued by this because the research she was presenting wasn’t clinical and had nothing to do with her research done at the hospital. She explained that her experience at UDel in addition to her post-bac experiences helped her to understand that she didn’t necessarily need to pigeon hole herself into choosing just one area of interest. In fact, she is still figuring out and narrowing down her interests. She also expressed that it’s okay if you find yourself in a research project that doesn’t necessarily perfectly align with your own interests. There is always something to learn, and if you think about it, a study that doesn’t align actually helps you to better understand what your true interests are.
Ariel’s comments about her journey so far couldn’t have come at a better time. I enrolled in this class because I’ve been so unsure of how to choose from all of my career interests. Although I have narrowed it down to wanting to conduct research and possibly teach, what that research entails, I couldn’t perfectly articulate that for anyone. In my mind, I’ve always thought that in order to apply for graduate school, you need to know exactly what you want to do (to get the most out of it and to have the best chance at actually getting in). Ariel reminded me that school is also about continuing to explore options and that although I may need to choose between clinical and nonclinical research eventually that the world of research has so much to offer that I will only continue to learn about as I progress through my education. It’s okay to not be 100% sure of everything, and I will continue to learn about my research interests as I gain more experience in the lab and in my classes.
