some challenges is I think time
management mostly you know I'm a pre-med
student and so there's a lot of things
that are expected of applicants you know
community service either doing research
or getting involved in certain
extracurricular activities as well as
maintaining a good GPA and doing well in
school so trying to figure out what
opportunities that I want to take
advantage of that will help me grow
personally and professionally but still
having enough time to devote to my
classes was really hard at first 'cause
again you don't want to spread yourself
too thin. I just focused on my schoolwork
because I didn't really know about all
the opportunities that UCR has to offer
like right off the bat and so I think I
would have if I would to go back into
things again I would find a student
mentor sooner so you know some that's
older than me at least by like a year or
maybe two to kind of tell me what is on
campus and what I can do if I want to
get involved in extracurriculars and
things like that and then the second
thing is to find a mentor like a faculty
mentor you know if you find somebody
that you might they have like a similar
career or like they have a similar path
is what you think you might want to do
it's like well what did they do and
then you can have some questions and see
what you need to be doing to get to that
path you know to get to that career goal
and I think I wish I would have found
that a little bit sooner just because
you know I thought I knew what I wanted
to do you know I want to go to med
school and I'll be a doctor right away I
just knew I knew but you know as the
time goes by and I got more involved in
extracurriculars and research I realized
that maybe a phd's might be my route you
know I just I wasn't open to their
career paths at first
and so I wish I would have found a
faculty mentor to ask those questions
sooner. My biggest success I
will have to say is I'm being awarded
the Barry Goldwater scholarship so that
is a national scholarship that you have
to be endorsed by the school for to
even apply to so it was it was a very
hard application process a lot of
components had to be put together I had
spent many hours and hours working on
these drafts you know of course with my
mentor the people in my lab with my
friends with Gladys from the
Undergraduate Education Office and so
just putting in all that work being one
of three people to be endorsed by the
school to apply for the scholarship and
then finding out that I was one of the
people that actually got the scholarship
was really rewarding. I think my main
like takeaways for students is like one
build your team like I said and then
like to you know ask a lot of questions
to faculty and you know learn from them
and their experiences and see what you
can do to follow in that career path
you
