+ "text": "Footnotes\n\n\nSimilar to my industry post, I’ve written out a brief summary of my personal circumstances and path through science as a footnote. Although I think most advice posts would have the below stories woven into the advice parts, I think it’s mostly distracting from the main points. But I still want to demonstrate how just being curious or lucky at pivotal points really have more to do with where I am now than some grand plan.\n\nI entered college in 2012 wanting to be a medical doctor, because I didn’t know what else you could do if you loved science. This desire started to fade in the middle of my freshman year when 1) I realized I probably couldn’t deal with human bodily fluids and functions, 2) I started to meet scientific researchers that got a PhD, and 3) I started my own research experience. The honors program I was in required at least 2 years of research, but since in the middle of freshman year I wasn’t totally sold on wanting to be a medical doctor, I started scrolling through the list of professors in the biology department that might have research openings for undergrads. I remember around that time I was fascinated in general about pathogen evolution and maybe wanted to research that. The lab I ended up joining did work on microbial evolution, but not specifically on pathogens. But it was the best environment and set of mentors I could have asked for where I was able to be curious, learn how to design experiments, keep trying after an experiment went wrong, and develop my writing skills. I originally was a Spanish minor (because I thought it would pair well with going to medical school) but wasn’t enjoying it. I switched to minoring in Statistics, and in my senior year took some programming classes both through my stats coursework and a programming for biology course. This is where the pieces started to come together that I really enjoyed computational biology and wanted to do more analytical work paired with microbial evolution.\n\nI applied to 6 graduate programs – two different programs at University of Washington, two different programs at University of Wisconsin – Madison, a large umbrella program at University of North Carolina, and Emory University. The unifying theme of where I applied was that I wanted a large-ish program that I could rotate through labs, because I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I had basically also been given the advice that rotating through labs is a good idea to make sure you are a good fit with the lab, mentor, etc. I knew broadly I was interested in microbial evolution and further developing my computational skills, but beyond that I didn’t know any specifics, not even what types of careers I would want after graduate school. I ended up going on three interviews and entered the Microbiology Doctoral Training Program at UW-Madison in fall of 2016.\n\nMDTP required a minimum of three rotations, and I ended up doing four because at the end of my three rotations I hadn’t found the right fit. At the time, the perfectionist, high-achieving parts of me saw this as a colossal failure, because I was the only one in my cohort that hadn’t joined a lab. But I talked to other students in my program that had previously done multiple rotations, and the common sentiment was they were actually happier with their choice because they had really taken the time to make sure they found the right fit rather than just forcing a decision to fit in. And this was exactly the case for me. The lab I ended up joining was probably the furthest from my radar, and I had actually crossed it off the list because I didn’t do “ecology or engineering” which were elements of what the lab did. But they were working on really interesting microbial evolution problems using computational tools, and I really felt I could fit well with the PI and the lab culture. Now I love thinking about applied biotechnology and microbiology problems. And the rest is history.↩︎\nContext for when I applied to grad school in 2015 – the GRE was still required, being an author on a publication wasn’t an “unwritten requirement,” and I didn’t have my own independent funding that I had been awarded. I had ~2 full years of research experience at the time of applying, primarily at my undergrad institution but also one summer internship experience. Nowadays a lot has changed that I don’t even know what to recommend to prospective grad students other than to have research experience of some sort so they have an idea of if they even enjoy that sort of work. Everything else involving the GRE (or not), grades, research experience, publications, funding, recommendation letters, etc. I’ve been too far removed from to be helpful.↩︎"
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