by Mary McFarland

Throughout my time this summer during the Brackenridge fellowship I hope to learn from other recipients of the fellowship. I want to learn about other projects, subjects, research, etc from other students. Being pre med can be difficult sometimes because it is constantly the same science and same research that you focus on. It is nice to hear what other students are doing because it shows me the many other paths that there are outside of my field. I am able to step out of that pre med circle and hear from a diverse group of students. 

My project is similar to other projects in that many other people are on science related projects. They are doing mouse models through their research with behavioral testing much like mine. It makes me wonder if most scientific research like this uses the same structure to answer questions. I have read a lot of journals before and they too use models to test something and answer their hypothesis. However, talking to students doing work in the humanities has a very different process than stem based research. Some use archival, surveys, etc to answer their questions. For example, one of the students in my cohort is a history and environmental major doing work in that field. I admire her type of statistical collection and research. It reminds me of the fall semester when I was able to dip my toe into italian research. We used archives, newspapers, etc to collect information from the 1910-1950s. It was a pleasant change and extremely fun to explore. Hearing those students in the humanities reminds me of this and while it is different from my neuroscience research I still love their perspective and strategies that other projects use. 

Working with people across disciplines makes you more self aware of other fields around you. This world would be incredibly boring if everyone was doing the exact same thing everyday. I appreciate the comradery that different disciplines create because it makes me a more well rounded individual. It teaches you how to listen and understand other people not similar to you as well as educate yourself about other issues, interests, and ideas in the community you live in. I appreciate this fellowship because it stresses the importance of diverse thought. I value this in my life greatly because I do not want to be narrow minded and not know of other ideas in the world.

This is a picture of mouse brain slicing. I have been working on this a lot the past week! In the picture I already sliced through all three brains.