Workshop Reflection

Being blunt, I have found that a majority of the workshops we have attended for this fellowship did not include as much new information on the research field as I was hoping for. Much of what we have gone over was already addressed during the UROP fall and winter semesters. However, there were a few key points from the Career Development 101 and Writing Academic Articles and Getting Published workshops that stuck with me.

To start, I appreciated the emphasis that was put on networking and its role in building a successful career. Being able to communicate with colleagues and coworkers is crucial, but perhaps more vital than that is reaching out to new acquaintances or connections in the work place as it is these relationships that will provide the many opportunities that are important for academic and career expansion. Through her wonderful seminar Charmise inspired me to get out there and make new friends. I thought the sample resumes were fairly helpful, too, as I have been meaning to reformat mine and they had the right "professional yet simple" look.

The academic articles seminar was also engaging in that it provided perspective from the humanities and social science world of writing and publishing, something I wasn't too familiar with. Although I knew a bit about the scientific literature process (my mentors in my lab are frantically tying together loose ends on a paper as I type this), I enjoyed having someone lay out step-by-step each part of the system. On top of that, the guest speaker was very entertaining and I liked that she openly talking about the best and worst parts of getting an article published.

K that's it.