Highlights​​​​

• I completed my Honors independent study. Sophie was an incredible mentor for this project, and I learned so much from our collaboration. As we work towards completing our piece in the coming year, we plan to apply to conferences and submit to journals for publication.

• Global Challenges was a huge success! We had an in-person audience of nearly 200 people in the HUB Lyceum and got over 3,000 views on the YouTube live stream. It also felt special to be a part of it because I got to be our first-ever student Q&A coordinator!

• I built meaningful connections. My roommates, grad student mentor, HPMP cohort, Honors staff members, and neuro classmates made this quarter all the more fun and bearable! I also got to do some networking by having lunch with the US Under Secretary James Kvaal and meeting with folks from the College of Education and Robinson Center to share my experience leading the HPMP.

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Challenges

• NEUSCI 302 was time-consuming. Every week was dedicated to studying for exams or writing lab reports, but I found it difficult to do both simultaneously. This led to a lot of procrastinating at first, but as the quarter progressed, I got into a rhythm and learned how to manage my time better.

• I left the Moorjani Lab. After enduring challenging circumstances and doing a lot of reflection, I realized this was not the lab environment I wanted to be in. At the end of the quarter, I decided to leave and transfer to the Palermo Lab for the rest of the year. Although this was one of the most difficult decisions I've ever made, I'm glad I did what was best for my health and research interests going forward.

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Goals​

• Start working on my thesis. I'm excited to shift my focus to a new project we are starting in the Palermo Lab and complete my thesis through that. Whether it's drafting the introduction or doing literature searches, I'm hoping to get something down before the quarter ends.

• Make time for self-care. Reading, journaling, and painting my nails have been my go-to self-care activities this year, and I'm excited to continue my self-care experiment into 2023. Some new practices I want to incorporate are mini-meditations throughout the day, quick workouts between breaks, and daily decluttering sessions.

• Hit the slopes! I got back into skiing over winter break and absolutely loved it. I'm planning to go on the weekends as often as I can next quarter.