People of Science with Jon Choy

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Synopsis

In this episode, we speak with Kensi Hartman who is applied to graduate school (PhD) this past application cycle. This fall she will be a first year at Berkeley’s Cell Biology, Developmental Physiology (CDP) program. Tune in as she walks us through her journey to science, provides advice for PhD applications and interviews, and why she chose to stay in the west coast instead of moving to the east coast to attend schools like NYU and Cornell!

Takeaways:

Science strikes again! Kensi was initially interested in medicine and becoming a physician. However, a love for learning biology drew her towards research and she joined a lab her sophomore year of college. Although her research was unsuccessful, it was successful in that she learned she loved being in the lab and figuring out new ways to make things work. Additionally, learning to take pride in the more menial tasks—knowing that they contribute to a larger goal was empowering and helped her solidify her science passions.

It’s ok: I believe a unifying experience among scientists is failure and that is the impetus for allowing us to advance fields forward. A valuable experience during her undergraduate research was how to experience failure and being “ready to not be completely demoralized”. This lesson has served her well, as her current position is full time providing her with more grace when things go unexpectedly and ultimately helping her make significant research progress.

Mentor = friend: Kensi’s current mentor is Dr. Andrew Muroyama, a PI leading a plant biology lab at UCSD. He has been an amazing mentor in many ways, including being available for questions/advice, guidance with scientific and personal writing, and the confidence and belief in her to succeed. I like how Kensi highlights a potentially unappreciated aspect of mentor-mentee relationships: the relationship itself. Kensi gets along well with Dr. Muroyama and believes this kind of friendship-connection has facilitated a fulfilling research experience, recognizing that although this type of mentorship works for her, it may not be ideal not be ideal for others. Nonetheless, Kensi feels lucky to have had such an amazing mentorship experience, as she was looking for a job post-graduation and did not necessarily have the luxury to choose where to go.

Inside apps & interview: Kensi applied to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,  Cornell, Duke, NYU, Rockefeller University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego,  University of Pennsylvania,  University of Washington and Weill Cornell  Medical School. She interviewed at all schools and was ultimately accepted to all except Rockefeller and University of Pennsylvania. Kensi and her mentor felt that 10 schools was a good number given the competitiveness. One tip she gave her was to basically have a polished draft for one or two applications and then use that as a template for other applications. Although there may be minor differences across applications, Kensi did not feel like had to change them too much since the prompts themselves were not asking for anything specific.

In terms of interviews, she observed the general structure to be where you talk about how you got into research and the research itself (how much varies). Further, she noticed that programs likely give a list of questions to faculty to ask but how strictly professors follow these varies—pointing how differences in the questions asked was more across faculty rather than across programs.  

West coast, best coast: Kensi initially thought she would move to the east coast for graduate school, where 7 out of the 10 schools she applied to were all in the east coast. Each school was appealing given their strong programs. However, a closer introspection of her priorities and values helped her choose Berkeley over east schools like Cornell and NYU. Ultimately it came down to the fact that nature is more accessible at Berkeley than at these other big cities. She underscores the importance of being able to picture yourself at your future university since there is good science being done everywhere (you will be able to find something you’re interested in) but where you live can not be changed so choose wisely! Perhaps a related note is that Kensi’s PI/mentor mentioned that name matters to an extent. Of course this shouldn’t be the deciding factor but keeping this in mind to aim high and if given the opportunity, going somewhere with a good name can set yourself up well later.

Looking ahead: Kensi hopes to pursue a career in academia after completing her PhD. In one year she hopes to have finished her rotations; in five years she hopes to have completed her PhD and in 10 years she hopes to be applying for professor positions. She hopes to explore this career option further in graduate school through TAing. She is also open to the idea of trying out industry!

You just never know: For anyone interested in pursuing a PhD, join a lab and see what it’s like doing research! Also getting a sense of doing research full time can be immensely helpful in solidifying your scientific aspirations, as it can reveal a lifestyle that may or may not be compatible with you. For Kensi, she was sure research was her after her experience in undergraduate and at her full time lab tech position at UCSD. And if you’re applying to PhD programs right now, look for schools with at least 5-6 faculty that you could see yourself working with. One important point Kensi highlighted was that even if you find a school with a good number of faculty you’d be interested in working with but are wary about other factors, such as location, still apply! For Kensi, Berkeley had a strong program but she didn’t think she would want to stay on the west coast, so she applied on a whim. . . anddd now she’ll be attending there in the fall, You just never know what’s going to happen!

Connect with Kensi on linkedin

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jon: Hi everyone, thank you for joining me for another episode of the People of Science podcast. I’m your host Jon Choy and my goal is to highlight the experiences of people in science because I believe that the experiences of other people can inspire deep reflection and be a powerful tool for clarifying our own convictions and aspirations. Whether you are considering if a PhD is right for you or are currently a graduate student, I hope that these conversations can be a helpful resource for you.

In this episode, we speak with Kensi Hartman, who applied to graduate school this past cycle. She’s been a lab tech at UCSD for the past three years and will be attending Berkeley’s Molecular and Cell Biology program in the fall. Stay tuned as she walks us through her journey to research, gives advice for applying and interviews, and why she ultimately chose to stay on the west coast over moving to the east coast to attend schools like NYU and Cornell.

 I’m super excited to talk to you about your experiences about research and how you got to where you are today and also where you are going to be very soon. But I guess before we dive into the Really the meat of the stuff. I thought it’d be good to start off with something more light hearted and the question is the audience wants to know is are you are you a cat or a dog person

[00:01:34] Kensi: oh gosh I always say emotionally i’m more of a cat person, but I love both cats and dogs. My family has cats back at home who I miss every day. But they’re Siberians, so they’re really big and fluffy and they’re really friendly and like talkative as well.

[00:01:57] Jon: I see. I think my, my liking towards cats has been slowly growing. But yeah, let’s, let’s dive into your research . So first, I guess I would just like to start off with Yeah, how you got into research and sort of what are the sort of significant experiences that led you to where you are today.

Because right now you are a lab tech, right, in a lab at UCSD. So maybe filling in the audience on where you are right now and then sort of bringing us back to the experiences that led you to where you are right now.

[00:02:32] Kensi: Yeah, yeah. So well, as you said, I’m a lab tech at UCSD right now. I’ve been here for about two and a half years. And I applied to the job just directly out of undergrad. So this is the first thing. I’ve been doing since then. The way I got here, well, I started being interested in biology because I was interested in medicine.

I thought I wanted to be a physician. I really liked the idea of going to med school and just like learning a whole bunch of knowledge, being really an expert at something and so I started taking biology courses and really loved learning like everything there was in biology. And so that’s when I started to consider research as well, because I thought if I love learning biology in class so much, then probably I would like kind of discovering new biology for myself in the lab and so when I was an undergrad, I joined a lab my second year. I think this is like pretty standard in most places, but my school professors kind of wanted second year students, not really first year students, just because those guys are still getting settled and stuff, so I joined a lab my second year.

And I just really loved working in the lab, like even doing some of the more menial stuff, like I worked in a fruit fly lab. So flipping the flies and making the media and just sorting flies around under the microscope. The fact that it was all like, part of some bigger project where we’re trying to like answer some question and figure out something new kind of made it all seem more exciting to me and then especially my second year, I took on an independent project and so that definitely gave me more of a sense of what it’s like to do research, like as a researcher later down the line and it was just fun to go into lab and be like, okay, what am I going to try to do today? And a large part of my project was trying to get these new protocols to work that our lab just hadn’t done before. And my PI was available mostly online. This was kind of during COVID times and she had a newborn baby and stuff.

So I could talk to her online, but she wasn’t really in the lab. So a lot of it, I got to kind of be like, Oh, I guess that last thing didn’t work. Maybe I’ll try this. And so there’s a lot of troubleshooting and figuring things out myself, which was pretty fun. I thought so from that whole experience, I was pretty sure that I wanted to pursue a PhD so I could keep doing research the rest of my life.

But I just wanted, well, for one thing to experience working in a lab full time to see how I liked that and then for another thing get more wet lab experience. Since I had gone to school during the COVID, a lot of my upper division courses and lab courses were just online.

And then also I had kind of stopped being interested in medicine.

I realized I didn’t want to be a physician. I didn’t really want to the lifestyle and also I realized I didn’t really want to interact with patients that much. And so then I kind of realized, Oh, I can study anything that I want to. It wouldn’t have to be medical related. And so I’d always kind of been interested in plants.

So I thought, Oh, I’ll pursue this plant thing. So that’s why I looked for lab tech positions in plant biology labs. And that’s how I ended up here at this specific lab I’m in at UCSD.

[00:06:21] Jon: One thing about research, I guess, is there’s a lot of failures and successes. Maybe not failures, but setbacks. do you mind telling us about some of those experiences? Maybe during your time in undergrad, and maybe also during your time in this new Plant biology lab that you’ve been a part of full time.

[00:06:39] Kensi: Yeah. So definitely during undergrad, a large part of my independent project was experiencing setbacks. That was pretty much the whole experience, I would say, because I was trying to get this new protocol or a few new protocols to work in our lab.

I was trying one thing at first, and it just wasn’t really working all the different ways I tried.

It had to do with fixing and staining tissues and then looking at them under a

microscope and ultimately we decided the microscope at our University just didn’t have quite the right resources to visualize what we were trying to see. So I kind of had to pivot and try another protocol that we thought might work better with our microscope, but then ultimately that didn’t work either. And so since I was doing this project for credit, I kind of had to have something tangible at the end.

So I ended up switching kind of drastically, I would say, and writing more of like a theoretical paper on how this research works. works, like what the whole process is for what I was doing as opposed to getting this one specific thing to work.

So it’s not a great story in that it didn’t exactly persevere and get the protocols to work, but it was like personally a good lesson to me and just to experience that yeah, a lot of working in a lab.

is things just not working. And you basically have to accept that and be ready to like not be completely demoralized. By that because then you’re probably never going to get anywhere.

And so, yeah, it sucks that it didn’t work out for the lab. But for me, it was kind of a good lesson moving forward.

[00:08:33] Jon: Yeah, I probably set you up well for the lab that you’re in now and perhaps you have some more positive success stories here

[00:08:42] Kensi: Yeah, definitely. I guess I should also say the undergrad position, of course, was limited by how much time I had there. So perhaps if we had more time, it was the kind of thing like could keep pursuing and trying to get it to work.

So that’s kind of been a difference here at UCSD. Like, I’ve been here longer. So even when things aren’t quite working there’s not this time pressure to be like, oh, I have to have some finished product from this so I can keep trying other things. There have been a few things again, like a new protocol in the lab, and it just isn’t really giving us results we would expect or just doesn’t seem like it’s really working.

And my PI has been like, well, that’s okay. Like, you know, we tried it, we tried a number of different things and it’s not really getting us anywhere. So let’s just focus on these other things that are working. So I think that’s also been a good lesson that sometimes it is okay to drop something you’ve been trying.

If it’s not really working, and find other things that you can put more emphasis into. And then of course, if whatever you’re trying to answer with the other experiment becomes really important, maybe you, you go back and revisit it, or find other ways to do it. But that like it is okay to say, “okay that’s enough of that” and like, we’re gonna move on now.

[00:10:03] Jon: Yeah, I love that point that you bring in also about like your mentors who sort of support you and be like, yeah, we exhausted all our efforts. It’s okay to just move on do you mind also talking more about your mentors along the way and sort of, how they supported you and got, you to where you are today?

[00:10:22] Kensi: Yeah so I’d say definitely my most significant mentor has been my PI here at UCSD. His name is Andrew. And, it’s almost hard to put into words exactly just because I feel like he’s been an awesome mentor in just about every way a mentor can be really awesome. But for me, it’s been a really good balance of he is always, he’s pretty much always around at the lab. And so I can ask him questions and get advice when I need it.

But he also, even from the very beginning had a fair amount of confidence maybe, or belief in me that I could do things that to me felt like almost too much. I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, why are you trusting me to do all these things correctly? But he did. And I think that was really good for me to learn like, okay, I can try these things on my own and I don’t have to ask him a question every single step of the way. And like, I might be able to actually figure it out and get things to work by myself. And so that kind of freedom to be more independent and explore things by myself has definitely helped boost my confidence and I think just my abilities in general to troubleshoot and think of what is like a reasonable approach to what I’m doing.

And then I think somewhat a more minor aspect of having him as my mentor, but something that has been really helpful is that he’s a really strong writer, which, of course, I didn’t really know that coming into the lab. But based on some. writing projects we’ve done together and then based on writing my graduate school applications and like I applied to the NSF GRFP so that was a fair amount of writing as well. Kind of being able to send things back and forth with him and see how he would approach writing things and get all his feedback and everything. has been really helpful to me because I don’t consider myself to be a strong writer. And so yeah, this is not, not something like I could have really selected going into lab, but I think moving forward when I’m looking for a PhD advisor, I should consider what skills do these PIs who are going to be my mentors have.

Like, what skills do I want to work on to try and find a good match that way.

[00:13:03] Jon: Well yeah I think I think everything that you said is really important about mentorship Sort of these mentors are the people who will be supporting you and, you know, hopefully, um, training you. Right?

Do you think these are the qualities that make a good mentor? Right? Maybe what a good mentor means could be kind of And so, do you think sort of, you know, a mentor that is available who believes in you, these are the qualities of a good mentor? Maybe what else makes a good mentor? And how can you find a good mentor

[00:13:36] Kensi: Oh gosh. That last part is a very tough question. I do feel like I, to some extent just got really lucky that I ended up with Andrew as my mentor. I definitely think at the stage I was at where I was applying to lab tech positions people maybe don’t have as much flexibility to choose your mentor.

Like you’re looking for a job and at a certain point you have to accept a position. I, I mean, I got so lucky Andrew was the first person I interviewed with and I immediately had like really good feelings about him. But even if you’re interviewing with. you know, a number of different people. Yeah, at a certain point you have to take a job, but I do think once you’re into your PhD program and doing rotations and looking for a good mentor, talking to the PIs obviously is going to be helpful to get a feeling for like, how well you feel like you can vibe with them and then this is just advice I’ve heard from other current students but really talking to everybody in their lab to see what they think about the PI’s mentorship style and, you know, what the PI does when there’s conflict actually one question I thought was really good was asking the PI what they think a successful PhD student looks like. to kind of really get an idea of what their expectations are. I think that can all help you find a good mentor.

And then as to what a good mentor is, I definitely think for me the PI being available, but also allowing me independence, like that’s a really good mix of qualities for me. It probably depends on the person somewhat. Maybe some people would do better with more close watch guidance and some people would do more with like a lot more freedom. So that I could see being very like, Person dependent.

But I guess another part of my relationship with Andrew that I haven’t really mentioned is just feeling like I get along with him. Like I can imagine if I were 10 years older, we could be like just friends in general because we just kind of vibe in that way, I guess. And I think that’s really helpful to be able to connect with your PI, like outside of strictly just talking about lab things just kind of helps build a stronger relationship there that I think is really helpful when, when talking about mentors, because you want to be able to talk to them about harder things.

And like, you know, the, the day you feel like you’re a complete failure in lab, it’s like really helpful to be able to go to your PI and say, I feel like I’m a failure. Can you help me? And that could be hard if, if you’re not like comfortable with them.

[00:16:41] Jon: Yeah, I love that. Sort of, maybe it also sort of just takes off the pressure and it doesn’t make it feel like, you know, too much like work anymore. but these people nonetheless, right, are the people who are trying to help you get to where you want to go. And that’s something that I like to talk about now.

And so you will be attending graduate school soon. And so maybe

can tell the audience the schools that you applied to, maybe where you were accepted and where you will be going.

[00:17:16] Kensi: Yeah, so I applied to 10 schools. So the 10 schools I applied to are Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cornell, Duke, NYU, Rockefeller University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington and Weill Cornell Medical School. It’s like Cornell’s Medical School in New York City. So those are the 10 I applied to and I got interviews at all of them and then ultimately was denied admission to Rockefeller and University of Pennsylvania and accepted at the rest of them. Oh, and then I have since decided on UC Berkeley, and that’s where I will be attending in the fall.

[00:18:14] Jon: Yeah. That’s so awesome. Do you mind sort of talking about your, experience applying to these schools is like, is 10 a lot? how was it actually applying to all these schools?

[00:18:26] Kensi: Yeah, 10, I think is a pretty standard number, actually. I remember Andrew had originally told me to apply to maybe like five or six when we first talked about it, maybe two years ago. And then a year ago, when I was. really starting to think about it. He came back to me and was like, okay, I think, I think you should apply to more like 10.

Like the numbers are different from back when I was applying. So I aimed for 10 and I ended up with 10, but definitely met people who had applied to like 15. Some people had applied to more than that. I don’t think people would apply to like less than eight these days.

And then it, I mean, for me, it was admittedly a lot of work. As I said, I don’t feel like writing is my strong suit. So it takes me a long time to write things. I kind of need a sense of urgency to really motivate me to write things. So I spent a fair amount of time working on my applications, kind of a few months out, but didn’t really make significant progress until we’re like, a month or so out.

So it felt like a long time of working on it, but most of the progress really came at the end. The nice thing is, I mostly focused on two or three applications to begin with. And kind of sent those back and forth with my PI to get feedback on. And then I was able to adapt to those kinds of responses to all the other applications cause there is a lot of overlap.

It’s still for me personally, still took a fair amount of work and mental brain power to adapt them just because there are all these slight differences and you feel like you want to make it really specific and good for each program. But at the same time, it’s not like you’re applying to 10 completely different things altogether.

So I would, I would say during that, like last month before applying, I definitely spent Most of my evenings and a good chunk of the weekend. I’m working on my avocations, but I don’t think that’s true for everybody

[00:20:51] Jon: Yeah, maybe you can you know talk us through how that kind of works maybe?

 I like your strategy of You know, getting two applications like done, and this is like a template, and I can apply this to other schools. But maybe it’s like kind of hard, right?

You can kind of get, tangled in maybe trying to fit it exactly. Did you apply to all the same programs? Like were, like were they all biology? Umbrella programs or were they like specific biology programs on and how did you sort of navigate that process of applying?

[00:21:25] Kensi: They were a mix of umbrella programs Like some are just complete biology umbrella programs. Some were umbrella ish, where they focused on kind of molecular and cell biology in general, but there’s a lot of different disciplines within there. And then a few of them were kind of focused on development, stem cell regeneration, that kind of stuff.

And the differences, between which ones I chose was mostly just that I currently see myself studying developmental biology. So if a school I was interested in had a developmental program, I would apply to that. And if they didn’t, then I would apply to like, one step out and then if they didn’t even have molecular and cell I would just apply to the biology program in general but even for the different like levels of specification I would say I don’t really feel like I had to change my applications that much based on how specific the program was because yeah I guess they just didn’t really I didn’t feel like they asked for it that much specificity in it. I mean, they want to know, like, why you want to go to that program. But in all cases, it was like, I want to learn how to study biology and development. So it didn’t really matter which one I was applying to.

I will say this did come up more during the interviews at some of the more specific programs. They would say, like, oh, why did you apply to this program specifically? Which in some cases I’d kind of forgotten that I applied to like a very specific program. I was like, oh, that’s a good question. But yeah, at the, at the written part of it, that was not, not so much a thing I had to change, I would say.

[00:23:20] Jon: Yeah, that’s that that is actually something I would like to get into sort of interviews how was that experience and was it sort similar across the board or you know, maybe where were some some challenges in that

process And maybe what did you learn from that from that interview process?

[00:23:39] Kensi: Yeah, well, so I would say it was it was pretty stressful, especially at the beginning. The first few when I didn’t really know what to expect. It just kind of felt like I’m talking to these people and they have my entire future in their hands. So like, what if I say something a little wrong or something? It was kind of scary in that way.

But definitely after I had done a few, then I was like, okay, I pretty much know what to expect. Most of the interviews went pretty much the same where the professor would say well, it was kind of funny. They would say, so how I like to do this is you tell me a bit about yourself and your research and then you can ask me questions about my research but then they all said that okay well that’s how

everybody does it but yeah so they would basically just start you with you kind of give a spiel about how you got into research what you’re researching now and then they this did vary professor to professor like how much they ask you about your specific research.

I think, so different schools, they like the program provides the faculty with kind of a list of questions, they’re kind of supposed to get addressed. And so definitely different faculty, even within one program, like, follow that more or less. So I’d almost say it’s less of like a program to program difference. That’s a faculty to faculty difference. Just how they, how they like to do it. I would say for the most part, professors didn’t really follow any sort of questioning scheme. I think I had like one interview out of, I don’t know, 40 or whatever, where she was very specific. Okay. I have to ask you all these questions.

Yeah. So after, after you do a few, you get pretty used to like, this is the process. And then at the end of the interview, you can ask them some questions about their work. And I did actually find it was pretty fun, I didn’t enjoy the part of like talking about myself as much. Although sometimes you get an interesting question about your research that’s kind of nice, it can help you like think more about your project. But the part I enjoyed was getting to ask them about their research. And not that I remember all the specifics now at this point, but it was really fun to hear about all these different areas of research. I felt like every day I was learning about something new.

And I was like, wow, I kind of wish I could like apply to grad school every year just so I can have this Month where I’m like just getting to talk to all these cool people and learning about what they’re doing yeah reasonable to be a little like scared going into it, but it’s also can be an exciting opportunity in that way

[00:26:23] Jon: Yeah, I can definitely imagine it’s a little intimidating talking to these sort of leaders in the field, but also like you said can be really fun learning about these really cool topics and really cool research One thing about sort of graduate school right is that you’ll be doing research maybe you can talk about why you chose Berkeley

[00:26:45] Kensi: Yeah, I think it came down to a few things One big requirement for me, of course, was that it had to have, like, a number of faculty who I’d be interested in working with, because that’s advice that I’ve gotten, like, over and over is, like, make sure there’s a number of people there that you’d be interested in working with even if you ask people ahead of time like hey are you taking rotation students? Are you taking thesis students? Like things could change for them by the time you get there with their funding or you know, sometimes professors move universities or whatever so you really don’t want to like put all your eggs in one basket and then even if they, they are still there and still taking students, maybe you, you rotate in their lab, but you realize like, wow, we really don’t mesh in this way. So, having a wide number of options to choose from, I think, like at least five would be ideal is So Berkeley definitely checked that off.

Honestly, 1 of the biggest considerations I was making was So I’ve lived on the West Coast, my whole life. I’m from Washington, and I went to school in Washington as well. And obviously, I live in California now. And so I really, really thought I would go to the East Coast. Seven of the schools I applied to were over there because I was just like 100 percent I’m going to the East Coast. I love New York City. So I really thought I would want to go to New York City. And so my other two big school considerations were. NYU and Weill Cornell, since they’re in the city.

But what I did like about Berkeley versus a lot of the places on the east coast is it’s a lot easier to get outside and access nature, especially compared to New York City. Like you have to, I don’t know, rent a car, take a hour long train ride out of the city or whatever, and then how do you even get places. Basically thinking about where I would want to live for five or six years. was a really big part of it, that’s a big part of what helped me decide on Berkeley. Like, Yeah, I just felt the, the setting around Berkeley was something I would, enjoy more, ultimately, than over on the East Coast.

And this also one of the biggest advices I heard from people is, like, choose somewhere you can live for five or six years even, maybe it was even their number one advice. It’s like, yeah, the program is important and faculty are important stuff, but programs are good everywhere. You can kind of find interesting research everywhere. Like, where are you going to be able to live?

And then lastly, a big part was just the strength of the program at Berkeley. Since I do currently think I want to continue in academic research, and go on to the professorship position. Andrew has told me like, obviously, your full experience is very important, but the bigger the name of the school definitely helps. And so if you can, go somewhere with a bigger name, like not that you should, you definitely shouldn’t make your whole decision based off of that, but it is going to help you down the line, and so I’ve felt pretty confident that Berkeley has a good name, so it will be good for me down the line as well.

[00:30:11] Jon: Yeah, I love that. think, it’s very real. Like you are going to be living at a school or not at a school, but living in that area for five to six years. And, yeah, although of course, research is a very important consideration as well. One thing that I also like to dive, into is. You did mention that you’re interested in, academia.

So if you can provide a one year, a five year and 10 year outlook, maybe becoming a professor is part of that part of that plan.

[00:30:41] Kensi: Yeah so let’s see, one year from now, I expect I’ll be finishing up or maybe halfway through my last rotation at Berkeley, I believe I’m expected to do about three rotations. And so finishing that up and deciding on which lab I will officially join. And then five years from now, I guess five years from now, I will hopefully be wrapping up my research.

I would really love to do a five year PhD. I think. The average is more like five and a half to six, even but, you know, I think setting, setting a five year goal can help me move things along. So yeah, I hope we’ll be finishing that up and applying for postdoc positions and then starting one of those soon.

So then in 10 years, depending on how long I postdoc for, I could in theory be applying for professorship positions. I might be being a little too optimistic about the timeline here, but yeah, and I think I, I want to look at more research focused universities I, I think I like teaching and I’m definitely excited to experience more of that as a PhD student because I’ll have to do some TAing at Berkeley, but I would definitely like to have a lot of my career be focused on research as well. So looking at a more research focused university.

I will say one thing though as I was going on all these different school visits, some of the students would ask, what are the opportunities to do internships with like industry companies and whatnot. And at first I was like, Oh, like that’s nice for them, but I don’t have to think about that because I’m going into academia. And I started to think about it and realized, I think part of the reason I see myself going into academia is because that’s the only thing I have experience with. So that’s the only thing I know kind of what it looks like.

And so now I’ve actually been thinking it would actually be really insightful for me to try and do one of these internships. A lot of people do it like over the summer. Maybe in their third or fourth year. And yeah, get a feel for like what it even means to work in industry. I kind of have no clue or concept of what that looks like. And so I’m also open to, you know, my goals and aspirations might change as I have more experiences during grad school.

[00:33:24] Jon: Next Kenzie, provides some helpful advice to those who are interested in applying to graduate school or who plans on applying to graduate school.

[00:33:34] Kensi: Yeah. Let’s see. Well, so if you’re still exploring as a potential career. I would say, well, definitely get experience in research. I’m sure folks already know that, but join a lab or your undergrad. And if you want even more experience, I think it’s super common these days to do. I did and tech for a few years.

And I think faculty even see as definitely a positive that you’re coming in with more. experience more knowledge of what you’re doing in the lab and also perhaps more just understanding of what your life in lab is going to look like and so a little more confidence that this is what you want to do.

And then if you’re already, you know, you’re going to apply to PhDs, and you’re looking at schools right now, I would say, based on what I was told, just apply for what you think are the best programs out there. Choose the programs based on having five or six or more even faculty whose research really appeals to you.

And then the last thing I would say is, Even if, if the school has enough people you’re interested in working with, and you think it’s a good program, even if you don’t think it’s necessarily a good fit, and you have the resources to, you should go ahead and apply and do the interviews, and hopefully get to visit and check them out.

Because for me, Berkeley, I kind of, applied to on a whim, especially since I didn’t think I wanted to stay on the West Coast. I was like, yeah, it’s a good school. So I guess I’ll apply, but like, realistically, I’m not going to go there. And now I’ve ended up finding that it’s, I think the best fit for me.

And I, I think I’m going to have a really good time there. So just apply even if you’re not sure, and then you’ll get the chance to visit and learn more about it later. And it might end up being a really good fit.

[00:35:29] Jon: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the people of science podcast. For summaries and transcripts and how you can get in contact with Kensi, navigate to the episodes page on my website at people science dot blog. Hope to see you on the next one.