During my high school years, I pondered upon what my future held for me. The only thing I knew at the time was I loved science. It was during my junior year that I discovered how much joy my AP Psychology course brought me, particularly the units which covered the brain and how it produced behavior. This set me on my path to pursue my undergraduate degree in neuroscience. When I arrived at Randolph-Macon College as a freshman, I had the opportunity to meet a couple of excellent peers whom I will be forever grateful to. They were upperclassmen who were Behavioral Neuroscience majors and already had a couple of years of research experience. Seeing how much they each had benefitted as researchers, and, more importantly, as lifelong students, I wanted to emulate their experiences in the lab. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing advisor take me under wing as a freshman on the recommendations of my aforementioned peers. While my experience as a researcher began by simply floating brain sections on prepared microscope slides, I was enamored with the process. It led me to design and conduct independent research through Randolph-Macon’s Schapiro Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). I fell so in love with research, both its failures …show more content…
I learned that hands on research is not as easy and clean cut as it seems on paper. What I mean by that is the many intermediate steps that one must go through in order to conduct good research. Furthermore, through time, my ability to ask more refined questions has been sharpened. My abilities to connect the dots have improved. Conducting graduate level research as an undergraduate has nourished my knowledge in ways I could not foresee. In many ways, the way one must conduct research is the way I want to lead my life. For that reason, I plan to attend graduate school to obtain my PhD in Neuroscience so that I may continue conducting