I will forever value the experience I was granted this summer as part of the Brackenridge Fellowship. I learned a lot about interdisciplinary work, the research process, and the opportunities available to me at Pitt. This summer I learned that research, particularly the methods and timeline of a study, are not as strict as I…
Author: Mikayla Joffe
We’re All In This Together!
Coming into this project, I did not expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I did. Not only did I make new friends and learn about various unique projects and academic interests, but I was able to brainstorm a solution to a problem I care about quite a bit. What amazed me about the…
Connecting With the World (Starting From My Childhood Bedroom)
The Brackenridge alum I chose to connect with via Pitt Commons was Sam Cwalina, a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California. It is incredible that as Pitt students we are able to make such connections with people across the country, and, I expect, the rest of the world. I chose to request a…
Crossing Academic Boundaries
In order to make one’s research accessible to all audiences, which is paramount to the universality of such studies, it is imperative that the information be translated, at least partially, into lay speak. Otherwise, no one beyond a small subset of people in a particular niche of study will be able to grasp the core…
My Cohort
The main reason for my initial interest in this fellowship, and partly why I am so eager to begin working within my cohort, is the interdisciplinary nature of the Brackenridge fellowship. Not only is my project itself interdisciplinary, but my personal and professional interests are rather diverse as well, so this boundary-crossing aspect of the…
Fellowship Introduction
Hello everyone! My name is Mikayla Joffe and I am a rising Junior at Pitt studying Writing and Psychology. For the Brackenridge Fellowship I will be studying the accuracy of mental illness depictions in classic Russian literature. I will be looking into the characterization of seemingly mentally ill characters in famous Russian novels and investigating…