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Health, advice, and what's next...

  Going forward I plan to work on my health. First off I need to work on my mental health a bit, I need to be able to feel confident about myself and my abilities again. I think that a good way to do this is just to jump right back into anything that is worrying me and deal with it head-on. Doing yoga this semester is helping me think more about my mental needs but also my physical needs which is the second thing I need to work on. I have been trying to get into better shape for way too long and my failure to accomplish this goal is most likely linked to my mental health. I don’t believe that I can work on one without working on the other. Part of my confidence is directly related to my contentment over my physical fitness so it makes sense to work on both in tandem. My career goals are still a bit up in the air, but I believe that I will most likely fall back into work that I was doing previously while I contemplate my next move, if I plan to go further with my education or not. M...
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Reflecting on Daring Greatly

       What I have gained from reading Daring Greatly by Brené Brown is a better understanding of the relationship between shame and courage. I know that regardless of what my next step is after I graduate I should have the courage and confidence to make any decision related to that step. The way I can gain the courage to make those decisions is by believing that I am enough, I don’t have to feel that I am inadequate in any way. Brené Brown says that we should practice gratitude and lean into joy, I know that I can get stuck in a rut thinking about all of the negatives surrounding me but I need to take a moment to be grateful for what IS going right and the privilege I have to be where I currently am. Lastly I should stop trying to control what is out of my control, this is where I can learn to be more vulnerable and move past the shame that may be keeping me from other things.
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What were the factors that brought me into STEM

     I think that the option to go into a STEM field was never off of the table for me. When I was young it was one of the many options that I could choose... although at that time all I wanted to be was a cartoonist, or a comic book artist, so STEM wasn't really something I thought about doing. I do remember watching science programs on television after school, there was Bill Nye The Science Guy, Beakman's World, and of course The Magic School Bus. I believe that I went to a pretty good school for exploring science, I may have been privileged to go to a school that was able to afford the needed equipment and setups for learning science. My parents were not a deciding factor in my decision to pursue STEM, however, they were not restrictive on our education choices so that may have helped open the doors for exploration. I think that I chose STEM because it just seemed right and I wanted to understand more about the world, but I can't say that I feel like I belong. There ma...
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Mindsets

       I would love to say that I have a growth mindset but there are times that I question that assumption.  There are certain areas of my life that I most definitely exhibit the traits of a growth minded individual, but there are other areas that I tend to be more fixed. My education has definitely influenced my mindset, it is something that I was starting to discover after I took my first couple semesters of biology. I started to notice that most things didn’t fit into a nice little box, perfectly described, and not worth further debate… quite the contrary is true. How could I learn all of this and not reflect on my own self; was I not a dynamic living creature like the ones I was studying? If the evidence shows that I am an animal born of the same inherited and ever changing DNA as the rest of the life on Earth, then I too must not fit in a nice little box, perfectly described, and not worth further debate. It makes sense that we can change our mindsets, it ...
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Prompt: Translating my college experience into employer-desired experiences

     I'm sure that I could pick any of the transferable skills and find something within my college experience to match it to. I've picked three that I think are useful and that I was able to get more experience with than the others the past few years: Leadership     For the past six semesters I have been serving as a TA for three sections of a plant biology class at the community college. In that time I have gained a lot of experience working with a diverse array of students. Many of the students excel in the class and need little help from me, but every semester there are at least a few who need consistent help. There are times during the semester when my help is in high demand, especially when we briefly cover genetics and photosynthesis. Overall the experience has helped me to fine tune my leadership skills. Communication     Another thing that I get to practice is  explaining scientific concepts to students pursuing non-science related degree...
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How I think I want to use my degree and why

This is an interesting question to ask for this blog post. I have been stressing over this very question for the past few years. At the beginning of my academic journey I thought that I would magically know by the end what I would be doing, but I am at the end of my college career now and I can guarantee you that I am just as confused about what I should do with my degree as I was at the beginning. I had ideas about doing research in a lab but after experiencing research I know that it isn't for me. I thought I might go into business using my degree, but I don't see myself as a business minded person either. I could use my degree to go into education but I also don't think that is a good fit either. I think that I need to take a break after the Spring semester to decided what I should do next. I may find that I am at a stopping point, or I may decide that I need to go further in school in order to get where I need to be. I wish I had a definitive answer for what I will do a...
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Reflections on my current and desired on-line presence

My online presence currently consists of an old unused social media account, an online art gallery to showcase my paintings, and Slack to communicate at work. We use it as an instant messaging app, and it seems to work well. Our next assignment is to create a LinkedIn profile, so I will soon have that to add to my presence. I've had a Linked In profile twice before but I never really used it, maybe this time will be different though. This amount is a bit higher than my desired amount would be, but it should be manageable. I'll admit though that I'm notorious for neglecting online profiles after I make them. I think I might be open to having a social media account if I ever make any sort of crafts to sell online, possibly something that combines my artistic side and my biology side, it would be completely product/art focused though.
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