Tag Archives: post-grad

Science Paths Beyond Graduate or Medical School

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Hello Scripps! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends and are ready to take on the last bit of the semester. After that, it’s a month of relaxation and rest. I was able to celebrate thanksgiving with my flatmates and a few other friends who live down the hall.

  In the spirit of thanksgiving, I’ve been reflecting on the things that I’m thankful for in regards to my education and the opportunities that a place like Scripps has to offer. As I’ve mentioned in some of my earlier posts, I have worked in a research lab at Keck since the spring of my first year and have had multiple opportunities to present my research and experience what life is like in a full blown lab. I have also mentioned my hesitation in attending graduate school after I am done at Scripps and have had some wonderful conversations with friends that have really helped make it more clear what I want to do, while simultaneously making me more uncertain and stressed about my future (quite like Schmidt in this scene).I have a friend from home who is working towards his Masters degree in Dublin and we arranged to meet for breakfast one weekend, as it has been years since we’ve really had the chance to catch up. He attended Oregon State University and was a double major in chemistry and biology. He did not go to graduate school for either subject and has since spent his time working at companies where policy making and science overlap. I was very excited to get the chance to probe him about his own experiences in deciding not to attend graduate school and where that has taken him after college. Similar to me, he mentioned that he knew he didn’t want to attend graduate school after his undergraduate education and felt overwhelmed by the seemingly low number of options he might have for a career.

It was very nice to hear about the experiences he has had since graduating and the ways in which he knew if a job was a good fit for him. The one thing he said that really stuck with me was actually a piece of advice his professor gave him when he was trying to decide whether he should go to graduate school. She told him that, because he didn’t want to go to graduate school or medical school, his path was going to be more difficult to figure out. She was not saying that his path was going to be easier per se, but in terms of figuring out the necessary steps to take, it would be a challenge, which honestly made me feel like Michael Cera below.

As she noted, and as I have noticed through my research on graduate programs and medical school, the paths are relatively straight forward. If you want to be a doctor, you get an undergraduate degree, take the MCAT, apply to medical school, do your residency, and are a doctor. For graduate school, you get your undergraduate degree, take the GRE, and then apply to different programs. Although these steps are very rigorous, time consuming, and academically challenging, there is a sense of security in knowing that your path to get there is clear.

For me, I feel pretty lost in what I am going to do after I graduate from Scripps, especially when I am asked what I hope to do with a chemistry major and an English minor. I hope that with exposure to more interdisciplinary fields and the work that I will need to do for my thesis, I will find more of what I’m passionate about. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it’s all right to not be sure of your future and can even help you be more open to new opportunities when they arise.

Best of luck in these last few weeks! I’m rooting for you all from Dublin!

What I wish I would have known when I graduated

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Hello, from DC! My name is Francesca Jimenez, Scripps class of 2016. This summer, I will be guesting blogging for Beyond the Elms, something I enjoyed doing in my senior year. Since the year I’ve graduated, I’ve done a lot: moved across the country, transitioned from a part-time job to an internship to one full-time career building role, negotiated a salary, bought a car, and gone from receiving zero job offers senior year to having recruiters regularly reach out to me via LinkedIn. In the year since I’ve graduated, there has also been a lot I wish I knew or heard from others. A year ago, I would have had a difficult time imagining all of this and journey to it. I will always be on a journey, but I have just come across the wide bridge that I saw at graduation — what life after college and becoming an adult means — and have done what I needed to do to truly feel determined and empowered about that journey. This summer, I’m here to tell you about all that’s happened and all that I wish I knew. I’m also here to tell you that what you want and sent your mind to, is possible — not without lows and hurdles, but at a certain point, I hope you’ll be able to reflect and see the wide bridge you’ve come across.

A year ago, I stood at this metaphorical bridge, it was shrouded in fog. I spent my last semester trying to prepare myself mentally for the move, planning out things I would do, but also partly expecting things to sort of “click” into place. Expecting things to click was a mistake. I will say, I am not great at dealing with change and transitional periods of life. I am not great at going all out with my life decisions and taking charge right away. I did have a plan, but the plan went wrong — I did things wrong. I was viewing this point of my life in a dragged out type of way. I felt like I should be having more arrival points or markers for what I should or should not be doing, instead of seeing it as a journey. That was one part of the problem.

I do not recommend moving across the country without a job. Usually people relocate and move because of jobs, I can see why. Even just typing that out, I can’t believe I did that. It was not comfortable.

I wish I could have known beforehand how lonely it felt at times.

I had a lot of solitary time. Aside from the part-time work, job applications, and networking, I felt aimless, like there there was no one around me who knew what I was going through. My friends had moved back to their hometowns, had opportunities lined up for themselves, and or were still in the same areas and hanging out. I felt uninspired and disconnected from everything that I enjoyed and made me, me. I lost interest in playing my viola for a bit because I hadn’t yet found or joined a group to make music with. I didn’t work out because I hated getting catcalled while running outside and a gym membership would have made me broke. I didn’t leave my apartment much because getting around would mean spending money that I couldn’t be frivolous with. My significant other had started their job on the Hill that had been lined up for 4 months and wasn’t going through what I was. I was ashamed to tell my parents what I was feeling because they would tell me to come back, and I would feel like a failure.

I wish I had told myself that I can do it.

I didn’t tell myself this enough. I had a lot of self-doubt. After all the celebrations after graduation, and the closure I thought it would bring, the same anxieties and issues I thought I had worked through fully, followed me. They compounded from an unfruitful 9-month job search, a strained social life, and a physically far and disperse support system. I had to take control of my life and I had to hustle.

To find a job, I connected with anyone I could, Scripps alumnae at all different career levels and years out of higher education, colleagues of family members, and cold calls and emails to contact information I found via LinkedIn or Google searches. To meet people my own age, I reached out to old acquaintances and made the point to my significant other I wanted to meet their friends. To find music opportunities, I found online groups via meetup.com and marked the next open rehearsals and auditions in my calendar. To get some exercise I did body-weight exercises in my tiny apartment with nothing but a chair and filled orange juice containers as weights. 

I was not always consistent, in doing these things. I’d slip, I’d get back up, and repeat it all again. The point is that I started, each choice made a positive impact on shaping my career path and how I wanted to live my daily life, and eventually they led to more opportunities and a stronger version of myself.

I wish I could have known sooner how to be the best version of myself for myself.

This will always be part of the journey. I was lost a year ago, few things held together the semblance of this fake feeling, across country, east-coast life I had put myself in. In reality, it was all on me, to do the best things, for me, to not cheat myself of opportunities and putting myself out there. The little glimmer of self-confidence that was there, shone through, at least a little bit everyday in the small steps I took to take control of my life. Three weeks after graduation, I had an informational interview that led to my first full-time role after graduation, an internship as an executive administrative assistant.

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Next week, I’ll be writing about networking and informational interviews, specifically when I was doing them post-college without full-time employment, and how those are different. 

Till then, soak up the sun (& wear sunscreen), readers!

The (Last) First Day of School

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Welcome back, Scripps! To all students, I hope you’re excited for your classes and are looking forward to the semester! The start of fall semester is really something special. Unlike the spring semester, it is a start of a whole new beginning. Coming fresh from summer, it’s a chance to bring those experiences back to campus and reconnect with the community. I thought I would be a little less flustered at the start of my senior year, but instead I lost my ID while moving in and I accidentally locked myself out of my suite on the first day of class. But starting senior year reminded me of a certain story about my first week at Scripps.

As a first-year, I went to a Fellowship Informational Session during the first week of school. 18-year-old me had decided to go to as many things as possible on campus and learn about all the opportunities available. At this point in time, I only really remembered the names of the girls in my hall and had started remembering where my classes were. Tiny conquests like that helped me adjust to college.

But 18-year-old me was really good at overwhelming herself (so is current soon-to-be-22-year-old me). I remember stepping into Vita Nova Hall, greeted by a sign in sheet. Maybe two dozen or so names were on the list before mine, but as I scanned the lines to write my own, the last column made my stomach lurch. Every other student in that room was graduating in 2013. I immediately thought, what am I doing here? All these students are seniors, and I’m just a first-year… Should I not be here? I mean, I just want to learn about these opportunities… Right?

I awkwardly sat near the exit and felt temporarily at ease, until Professor Edwalds-Gilbert started the presentation. The presentation included the descriptions, requirements, and timelines for a number of fellowships such as the Watson, Fulbright, Napier, etc. I left about 20-minutes in to the presentation and headed straight back to my room, but decided to stop and gather myself on the bench by the huge tree on Jaqua Quad.

The overwhelming feel kept escalated in my head, I was shaky and even a teary eyed, and at the time, I couldn’t put together why. I had just gotten to college, eager to take in as much as I could, and then immediately I felt like I was out of place, like I could never possibly pursue those opportunities after graduating.

Well, here I am now, the last first day of school, when three years ago, I couldn’t tell you what I wanted to major in let alone what career path I wanted, and that was okay.

Looking back on that story, I was scared. I was scared of the possibilities of what could be my future, and that overwhelmed me, especially since I wasn’t even completely comfortable at Scripps yet. But I take a few important things away from that experience; I must always discover what could be, by always feeding my curiosity and putting myself out there. Searching for those opportunities seems daunting at first, but throughout my time at Scripps, I have sought other experiences that have accumulated and empowered me with the confidence needed to take the next steps during my senior year in preparing for after graduation.

The Watson Fellowship Informational Session is this week on Thursday, September 4th at 3 PM in the Lang Art Building, Room 221, and I plan on attending.

So during these first few weeks of school, I encourage you to look back and see how far you’ve come. Whether you’re a first-year or a senior, your hard work has paid off to get you to where you are now. The bumpy roads are always rough, but you’ve learned more about yourself for it. I know I have! From getting accepted to Scripps and my last first day of school, first-year me would be really surprised to know what I’ve accomplished and see where I am today.

Life in the Petri Dish

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Working.

Studying.

Those two things can feel so disparate sometimes. “The Academy” and everything beyond it can feel totally beyond reach from within the Scripps bubble. I had a kind of rough time freshman year finding my place at Scripps. Transferring from small-town breadbasket to (sort of) big-city liberal arts was not easy for me at first. I don’t think I realized how disoriented I felt (feel, sometimes) at Scripps until I came back here and found myself feeling more comfortable and grounded.

So whenever it would re-occur to me that I had to write an essay linking my on-the-ground, Midwestern, political experience with my radical, liberal arts, legal studies education so that I could get Scripps credit for my internship, I would freak out enough to push the whole thought from my mind for awhile.

And three months later, here I am, still struggling to find words to help me make the mental journey from here to my classes that start in two weeks.

I wish I could say that connecting my education to my summer job is easy. It isn’t. You may feel like you’re living your education when you’re pushing through a heavy round of midterms, but you’re not. You’re not actually living your education until you have to walk it and talk it in a room full of people who aren’t your professors or classmates.

You’re not actually living your education until a person’s path crosses yours one time, and one time only, and in the ten minutes you share together, the only thing you can tell them is that the law doesn’t require Veterans Affairs to provide them with health care benefits they know they earned during their service.

It’s hard to connect what I’ve learned at school to what I’m doing at work not because my education isn’t relevant or because my home state is some utopia far removed from the stuff I’ve learned in my classes. I think it’s hard because when you’re examining something “in theory” and from a distance–and this goes for any subject, I think, not just the humanities–you get a bird’s-eye view of a problem. But when you’re out in the world, you’re not granted that perspective. It’s easy to examine bacteria in a petri dish when you’re looking through the microscope. It’s totally different when you’re living and working in the petri dish and are trying to make acquaintances with the other bacteria. Looking at a problem in a controlled environment is so much different than looking a person in the eye. And I struggle to incorporate the complexities of my education into the unique situations I encounter every day.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. When I was first starting my tutoring job on campus, the hardest part was knowing the right questions to ask and the most helpful (and realistic) advice to give. After probably a year of tutoring, I realized that my response to each situation came from the same mold but carefully tailored to each new person and her essay. I’ve had to do the same thing as I learned to collaborate with the staff at the Scripps newspaper. I’ve had to do the same thing as I learned to take disgruntled constituents’ phone calls this summer.

So I guess what I’m saying is that it takes more time and more careful thinking to incorporate your education into your every day life than most people (including me) ever realize. It requires experimenting, adjusting, and continued learning. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my legal studies classes, it’s that the law is heavy and onerous and at the mercy of the whims and shortcomings of everyone who touches it. That much I can say without a doubt has been true. But I’ve struggled with knowing what to do with this information.

This is probably why my career prospects are all over the place. You don’t really get a ton of guidance in this area in the classroom, but that’s because it’s unique to each person, and it’s something you just have to learn as you move about in the world after college. That’s really, really daunting. A career in sheep herding is sounding pretty great right now.

“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
(photo credit: MissMPhotography)

I always struggle with coming up with an ending for things that I write, probably because the way I write and think always produces more questions than answers. I always feel like I need to impart some important piece of wisdom to tie it all together (thanks, 8th grade English), but rarely do I have that kind of clarity. I told a good friend who reads this blog that I sometimes feel like I should have a huge banner above each of my posts that says “DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.”

Full disclosure: I’m lost inside and outside of the petri dish.

This summer has been such an experience. I’ve learned a lot about politics and what (good) legislators actually do, certainly, but I’ve also learned a lot about myself and what I expect from myself going forward. This summer has reinforced one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned at Scripps: it’s okay to not know what I don’t know. I hate to leave you with that, but this work in progress has a lot more learning to do.

Thanks so much for putting up with my ramblings all summer. Take care, and good luck!

All the best,
Em