This week’s videos have made me reflect on what I do well and what I often choose to do. When I think of what I do well, I often think about being a good student. I am good at laying out what needs to get done when and organizing my schoolwork. I am also good at taking notes that help me study and at figuring out the best way for me to study. I would also consider myself a good teacher. As a swim coach, I was relatively successful in helping swimmers improve their technique and saw improvement in their times at meets, too. As a Girl Scout completing her Gold Award, I was successful in teaching young students about their nervous systems, as evident by their participation and projects during the summer camp I created and ran. Module Five also made me think of some of the things I don’t do as well. I’m not very good at working with others who have very different mindsets and approaches to problems that we need to work on together. I also often struggle with technology, especially when introduced to new platforms.
When I think of what is important to me, especially what I often find myself choosing to do, I tend to see three important patterns. One is that I like to surround myself with kids. Whether that’s as a coach, as a Girl Scout, or as a research assistant in a cognitive development lab, I constantly seek out opportunities to interact with and learn more about how kids learn. This tendency definitely helps me to understand that I am interested in a future where I get to interact with kids because the times that I do are often some of my favorite moments of the day.
Secondly, I tend to place myself in situations where I can problem solve. Being a coach and trying to figure out how to help specific kids with specific aspects of their technique is just one example. Being a research assistant and reading different studies to understand how ours fits among the research is another. Working with Girl Scouts to improve their projects is one of the most rewarding parts of being a Girl Scout myself. Content editing takes a lot of detail-oriented work and having to figure out what material is cut from a video in order to keep the meaning and the 30-minute time limit is very much like piecing together a digital puzzle. And taking classes such as organic chemistry, neurobiology, and psychology further help me to hone my problem-solving skills. I think that these examples help me to understand that my future career needs to be one in which I can challenge myself to solve a variety of problems from different angles.
Overall, reflecting on these aspects of what I do well and what is important to me, I am beginning to better understand that the path of being a research scientist and a professor is one that would fit well with both aspects. I also see how being a pediatric neurologist would also fit well with both aspects, but after more thinking, especially regarding my health and want for goals outside of my career, I think that research and teaching would give me the senses of fulfillment and achievement that I seek in a career.
