S-STEM/TRAIN Scholar Christopher Livingston's Blog

 1. What are your professional goals, 1 year, 5 years and 10 years into the future? What will accomplishing these goals let you do? How will accomplishing these goals impact those around you and what will it make possible for those in your community?      I think that my professional goals are pretty basic and they won't change over the course of the next 10 years. My goal professionally is to be in a stable career that is low-stress and involves the thing that I love most, plants. That may take a masters degree, but I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm currently looking at working in a herbarium, so in order to get there I need to experience an internship with one or more herbariums, and luckily I already have one lined up for the summer. There are zero people who will be impacted by any of my decisions as usual. As far as my community impact, I'm not sure there will be an impact to my immediate community, however, the scientific community might benefit from my

 1. What did you know about your field 3 years ago, and what have you learned about that has 'wowed' you? (Supplemental questions: What did you used to think was an advanced topic in your subject, and what do you think is now? What was the experience that you feel you learned the most from?) 2. What do you want to learn about over the next 3 years? (Is it scientific or personal? Why do you want to learn it? How do you plan on developing this knowledge?) Well, I wish I could say that I know what my field is, but the truth is that I still have no idea what I'm doing with myself, or where I'm going. There just aren't enough classes offered that speak to my interests in plant biology. So, based on that I don't think I can actually answer these questions as they are. I will try to answer these questions more broadly about my educational experience, however. Three years ago I was just coming back to school from a "career" in retail management. I remem