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Monday, August 2, 2010

Interview With a Grad Student

Yesterday I sat down with Kim, a grad student in Dr.Aitken's lab, to discuss college, being a grad student, and how she ended up where she is today. We talked about many things, from why she chose chemistry to her fascinations with knowledge as a child. Through talking with her I gained insight into how I should think about college and what I should look for in a career.
When Kim was in first grade she had her first science lab, and that is when she fell in love with it. She was always interested in learning how things worked and how stuff like chairs and phones were made, and by whom. Although she loved science, she also loved teaching, but having a career as a science teacher wasn't very appealing at the time. Growing up with science teachers that wore pocket protectors, and suspenders did not help her opinion of science teachers. To her and her classmates science teachers seemed like big jokes, because all of them wore very unfashionable attire. As she became older she realized not all science teachers have to dress like that, and so Kim became set on being something that would incorporate her two loves, a science teacher. When she was in high school she decided that she wanted to go somewhere close to home, because she's very close to her family, and wanted to have them close. She decided on going to St. Francis University in Loretto, Pa. She went there majoring in education. She soon realized that it's very easy to get caught up in your subject's social groups. When she took classes like Physical chemistry, which was the hardest class for her due to the size of the substance you're working with, she became caught up in the chemistry social group, because they were forced to work together for long hours so socializing with others outside of your subject of study was uncommon. When she finally had the oppurtunity to decide where she wanted to go for grad school it wasn't a difficult decision, because she already knew what she wanted. She picked Duquesne, because of how close it is to her family. Although, deciding where to go was somewhat easy, being a grad was not. She had to learn quickly that not everything was going to work, and after trying something over and over again, you have to stop at some point. Doing so much work on something, and ending up with it being unsuccessful was hard. She said when you become a grad you realize just how naive you were. Her greatest success though was being able to start reseach before college, which did give her some insight for being a grad. Although she loved loved being a grad, because you don't have set hours, she missed the freedom of being an undergrad, and the different people. She regretted not spending enough time on her non chem classes, and that she was shy and didn't ask questions. This is something I can easily relate to, and is one of the reasons talking to her helped so much. Mr. Lucas always says be assertive, now I have someone else pushing me to be assertive too.

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