Mikayla Scheckler Senior @ University of Pittsburgh Political Science & Urban Studies Major Unique about me: I grew up in rural Appalachia where we saw similar problems to the communities in Fayette County. The purpose of the Appalachian Teaching Project (ATP) is to get students involved in a ten year community-based research to discover the…
Tag: Fall 2022
A Letter to a Stranger
Dear Adriana-from-September-before-leaving-for-the-experience-of-a-lifetime, It is December 14th, 2022, exactly one week before I am flying back to the States for the holidays. I am currently sitting in a new coffee shop I discovered this past weekend with my friend from Barcelona. They have amazing tiramisu here, and their hot chocolate is to die for. Today, I…
Living Like a Local
I am proud to say that I am continuing to become more of a local in Nicosia. After two months here, I have got just about all the bus routes mapped out and I can definitely show you some of the best coffee shops downtown. Most of my learning has come from the unexpected; off-the-cuff…
Reflections / Ramblings from CURF
Due to its hands-on nature, research can be incredibly exciting, fun, and engaging (especially when it works). However, as with most things, this is not “always” the case. And when things don’t work as expected, research can be frustrating, disappointing, and perhaps not so fun. This semester has really been a semester of growing along…
CURF 3: The Road Ahead
This semester, I worked a lot on my BPhil/Honors thesis project. One of the tasks I had to do for the honors thesis was to create a proposal and defend it to my committee. For this, I had to create and give a quick (15-20 min) presentation summarizing my proposal. I learned a great deal…
CURF 3: Final Reflections of the Semester
Over the course of the semester, my understanding of the research process changed quite a bit. Last spring, it appeared that my experiments were more successful on average. However, looking back, this is not completely true. Working with fewer variables and simpler mechanisms, my previous data looks better, and that was on purpose. Instead of…
CURF Reflection
All cells in a multicellular organism contain the exact same DNA. However, to create the different cell types (neurons, blood cells, etc), each cell uses or expresses different pieces of DNA, creating mRNAs that encode for proteins needed in different cell types. I spent this semester researching the role eRNAs (a type of non-protein-coding RNAs)…
College Xoice Wrap-Up
I learned and grew my skills exponentially through this internship. I’m extremely glad that I was chosen for this role and for this company! Working at a small tech startup, specifically with a smaller team, has made me realize how important communication is. In the beginning of the semester, my fellow intern and I spent…
A Pinterest “Vision Board” in the Works
With each week that goes by, my heart becomes more and more torn at the thought of leaving Belgium. I would place myself in the denial stage of grief at the moment; I refuse to believe that I only have about a month and a half left. On some nights, I feel as though I…
CUTF: Synthesis of my experience
During my time completing the CUTF, as I worked on putting the concepts in the course into a real-world perspective, I’ve developed an appreciation of the research done in chemistry, which is a completely different field from the one that I have built my experience around. Many of the concepts discussed and terms used were…