Epidemiology Personal Statement

Mapping out infectious disease transmission has always fascinated me. It's like putting together a puzzle without knowing what the image is nor which pieces you may or may not have. This process is something that an infectious disease epidemiologist often faces on a day to day basis. This aspect, along with the building of statistics, analysis of population trends and just overall dealing with communicable pathogens, are just a few reasons why I have made the choice to pursue going into infectious disease epidemiology. This decision however, did not come easy which is why I decided to include certain experiences in my capstone to get there so that I could relinquish any self-doubt I had about my future goals, explore my passion of infectious

This experience was essential so that I confirm that research was something that I truly wanted to be a part of my life. However, I didn't know how much. I was torn with the idea of doing research in a field of microbiology or immunology and becoming an epidemiologist. During my research experience, I got to be more involved in process of clinical research and the start to finish process of maintaining a biobank. I also was made in charge of abstracting all of the participant files and teaching others how to do so. Specifically, I was able to put on an epidemiological hat and hunt down information that was needed so that I could make an in-depth and accurate profile of a participant. In addition to this, I had the chance to attend several seminars on related topics that I was captivated by. This alone allowed me to understand the types of research being done in labs around fields, like immunology, that I was interested

In order to figure out the first aspect of this, I took three graduate level courses. However, the one that impacted me the most was titled, "The Ecology of Infectious Diseases." At first, I was so excited to take this course, but it turned into something that I had not expected. I thought the class would be full of lectures and lots of memorization and I was prepared for a very hard course. As challenging as it was, I didn't learn the true goal of the class until I saw it in summation. Graduate classes, like this one, are about application. They no longer want you to study terms and repeat them back in an exam. They give us real life scenarios and teach us methods of use during the study of infectious disease so that we can then make the connections to solve epidemiological investigations. In all honestly, I was not prepared for what this class had to offer. I wasn't sure how to prepare for the exams nor was I aware of how to think about some of the assignments. This class allowed me to get out of the habit of repeating information back on assignments and to start thinking about the concepts as if I was dealing with them as an epidemiologist. This application was hard for me to understand but by the end of the class, I feel that I gained a great sense of learning how to