Tag: Research

Why Not Having a Solid Plan is OK

By Carolina Becerril (SAR’22/SPH’23)

As soon as I started out my college career, I knew I had a plan or at least I thought I did. I would go on to complete my four years as a premed student, take the MCAT, volunteer, get clinical and shadowing hours and create an excellent application that would guarantee me entrance into medical school. All in four years! Nothing crazy. Well, that very quickly changed as soon as classes started and I realized how coming to college was a lot more complicated than I expected.

I don’t say that to scare anyone coming into college but it’s something that we are all bound to realize at one point or another, and that’s ok. After my first premed course, I felt defeated to say the least. I felt like I needed to keep trying so I could stick to my plan, that if I studied a little harder, stayed up a little later and cared a little more, that I could do it and make it to medical school. At whatever cost. That also very quickly changed and did not work. By the end of my freshman year, I was more than discouraged and lost. I realized that my plan didn’t work and I didn’t have a backup one.

However, the summer of my freshman year going into my sophomore year very quickly changed my perspective on me not having a plan anymore. I got my first job at the Dean of Students office and my first research opportunity and glimpse into public health. I very quickly developed a passion for what would later become my major and main field. I met and made connections with different people that summer that completely changed my perspective and made me realize that I didn’t really need a plan, I just needed to do what was best for me.

At the beginning of my sophomore year, I quickly changed my major to Health Science and began looking into the 4+1 BS/MPH program. I continued doing research for the majority of my sophomore year, took more public health courses and grew more passionate about the field. I applied to the 4+1 program Fall semester of my junior year, got accepted and began taking MPH courses that Spring semester. I continued to do research on my own while remaining premed and becoming deeply immersed in the public health field.

While these last few years have proven to be challenging and exciting at the same time, I have come to realize that admitting to myself that having no solid plan is totally ok! As long as we get to do what we love most. I have learned that remaining flexible and being open to different options to achieve your career goals is the most important thing I can do to be happy and successful. Most importantly, I learned that we need to remind ourselves to be a little less scared about uncertainty and embrace whatever comes our way, even if it doesn’t quite fit what we want as it might just work our way.

Research in the Social Sciences

By Jackson Moore-Otto (CAS’22)

For this blog post, I’d like to discuss research in the social sciences: both why I recommend it, and some of the unique benefits and challenges.

Even if you don’t plan on going to graduate school, undergraduate research provides a unique opportunity to work on issues of personal interest under the mentorship of an expert in the field. It’s also versatile: it can be done during the semester or over the summer, largely individually or as part of a much larger group, and as a way to learn about a topic or a capstone to one’s studies.

Research can also provide a chance to explore areas not covered in traditional coursework. For example, last summer I had the chance to conduct research on how the public involvement process, and local opposition, increase the cost of infrastructure projects. This is something I’ve long been interested in, but would have had little chance to explore in my coursework as an Economics and Mathematics major. This also offered me the chance to meet faculty in the Political Science department, and exposed me to another intellectual universe. Involvement in research was an intellectual springboard for me: it clarified my interests and increased my own confidence.

While social science research can be uniquely rewarding and impactful, there are some unique challenges. Compared to the natural sciences, it can be harder to find an existing project to attach oneself.

This is where Kilachand can make a difference. The close relationships forged with faculty--particularly through the first-year seminars--can provide a leg up in research, and in everything else.

A Day in My Life as a Biomedical Engineering Major and Pre-med in Kilachand!

By Emma Hartman (ENG’23)

5:40 AM: I wake up. OK, OK: don’t panic reading this -- as hard as it is to believe, this is something I do to myself willingly and for reasons completely unrelated to academics. My favorite hot yoga class is at 6 am on Wednesdays at a yoga studio less than 5 minutes from my dorm. There are other yoga classes at normal times, but I really like this one.

6 AM: Hot Yoga! I started practicing yoga about a month ago to shake up my routine and quickly got addicted. I use it to manage my stress, stay in shape, and as something fun and COVID safe that I can do with friends.

7 AM: I take my time on the walk back to my dorm. I live in a safe area that’s incredibly pretty in the morning and I’m trying to enjoy it more. When I get back to my brownstone, I make some breakfast (I’m currently training in the art of microwave-based cooking) and shower before class.

Beacon Street in the morning, right by South Campus.
Beacon Street in the morning, right by South Campus.

9 AM: I arrive at the George Sherman Union (GSU), our student center, before my first class and meet up with my friend Sarah. Our Differential Equations lecture is remote learning only this semester, but we meet up to get Starbucks, catch up, and to take the class together in the library attached to the GSU. We claim that we keep each other accountable and focused, but we almost always wind up talking during the slow parts of class.

10 AM: Sarah and I leave the GSU and walk to our next classes together. I have my Cell Biology and Biotechnology lecture, where I run into Natalia, one of my friends from Kilachand. We met during our first semester of freshman year in a Kilachand seminar on Latin American music. I met a lot of engineers in that class since we all took it to fulfill the same HUB units. I still see a lot of them in my engineering classes or around campus!

Socially Distanced Biology Lecture in Agganis.
Socially distanced Biology lecture in Agganis.

12 PM: My lecture is over, and I want some lunch. Some days I’ll stay by Agganis Arena, where my lecture was, and eat with my friend Karolyn who lives in West Campus. Other days, I’ll head back eastward and eat with my friends Chloe and Sarah, who are studying at the GSU. No matter where I am, I always try and use meals as a time to see my friends.

1 PM: I head into the BU biomedical engineering research lab that I work in. We study mice to learn more about the neural circuits in the brain responsible for movement. Right now, I’m working with a PhD student on her latest project. Together we’ve been training our 3 mice—Matcha, Mocha, and Macchiato—to perform different behavioral tasks. Once they’re trained, we use electrophysiology probes and optogenetic techniques to record neural activity in different parts of their brains (basically: we stick a sensor into a genetically engineered mouse’s brain and choose what areas of the brain we want to record data from by using a laser to selectively silence groups of brain cells). I ask my grad student a truly annoying number of questions about the research, and she answers every last one because she’s genuinely happy to help me learn.

My lab mouse Matcha is in her tube and ready for training!
My lab mouse Matcha is in her tube and ready for training!

4 PM: It’s time to log onto Zoom for my HUB co-curricular, a course that I take in tandem with KHC HC 302. We teach Boston high schoolers about public health through a local program called Boston Area Health Education Center. It’s a great way to give back to the local community, learn more about public health and the Boston Public School system, and secure a coveted HUB unit.

6 PM: I log off of Zoom and knock on my roommate Iris’s door. We’re off to go find dinner so we can bring it back home, eat on the couch, and talk about our days. Sometimes we put on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or the Bachelor while we eat

7 PM: I do some homework and answer some emails for my Girls Who Code club.

8 PM: I log onto Zoom office hours for my engineering mechanics class. I work on my homework and private message my friend Jenny, who’s also here because she’s struggling with problem #7 too.

9 PM: My roommate wanders back out to our couch and wants to figure out our weekend plans. We bring our laptops to the couch and work while we talk. Eventually, we either finish or abandon our work and just relax.

10:15 PM: I start getting ready for bed, write in my journal about the day, and look at my color-coded Google Calendar as I write in my planner about tomorrow. Tomorrow’s schedule is incredibly different, but no less exciting!

De-Mystifying the Keystone Project: Deciding on a Topic

By Nikita Sethi (CAS’21)

The Kilachand senior Keystone Project offers students free reign to craft a project in a subject they are interested in with the resources of Kilachand to back them up. For the first two years of my time in the Kilachand Honors College, I had very little idea what I was going to do with this opportunity. I did not have too much experience in my field outside of my classes, and spent most of my free time in choir practice or working. The summer after my sophomore year, I happened to pick up a book called “The Privileged Poor” by Anthony Abraham Jack. In this book, Dr. Jack outlines the ways that the lived experiences of low-income students at elite institutions are affected by their status as low-income. Reading that book, I recognized a lot of the things that I had been struggling with in my first two-years at Boston University. This was research about me, about my experience, and I needed to know more. I rushed down to the Kilachand office and told Eric and Danny all about why this subject was important, and why more people needed to know about it. The two academic advisors laughed a little bit, as they both had graduate degrees in the subject I was just beginning to become interested in, but they both lent me books from their personal libraries that covered the subject. The rush of excitement I felt in researching the issues that had plagued my undergraduate experience was initially just for my own personal research, but by the end of the summer, I realized that I could contribute to the body of work on this subject through my Keystone Project. And that’s just what I did -- I am currently in the last semester of completing my project entitled, “The Lived Experiences of Low-Income Students at Boston University.” I have been using the resources that Kilachand provided to interview low-income students on campus and create a podcast about their experiences. In the end, for me, the correct path for my Keystone Project was to just lean into the thing that I spent the most time thinking about in my four years. If I could give advice to incoming freshmen about the Keystone, it would be to not sweat it too much -- just pay attention to the things you are passionate about.