Overall, I had a wonderful time participating in the Health Sciences Research Fellowship! I learned more about what research means, how to communicate my research, and even how to present my research in a professional setting. In terms of my own project, I ran into quite a few challenges and learned that completing a full project takes more than a couple months. There are so many small challenges and roadblocks that arise and problem solving takes good communication with the rest of the team. For example, my project is a clinical study and started off with 80 patients, but after evaluating all the data, the final list will be about 45 patients. Initially, I had a different view of research and throughout my project, I learned that even no results are results and we can even learn a lot from insignificant results. Also, projects are fluid and adaptable–although we had an initial plan, it changes throughout the project and that’s okay. As a result, I learned more about what goes into designing a project from start to finish and what it takes to actually achieve the final goal.              

Throughout the HSRF, I found the group of students to provide a lot of insight to my project and the research field as a whole. We all have vastly different projects, ideas, and questions and there is so much to learn from one another. As I talked with various members, I learned how to explain my research in depth, but also how to give a short summary that anyone would be able to understand. Additionally, I found the guest speakers to provide a lot of insight within Pitt and within the field of neurosurgical research as well. After undergrad, I plan to go to medical school and it was very interesting to learn about the overlap between clinical medicine and research and how we can do both.  

Now that the Fellowship is over, I hope to continue my project and complete it over the semester. I’ve gained so much insight on the strengths and weaknesses of my project and would love to learn more about the paper writing process next. After meeting with my scholar mentor, I also learned about scholarships to apply for in my gap year and would like to work on those next. Specifically, there is one focused on community health within the U.S., and as it is something I could see myself doing in the future, I would love to get some more experience next year!