Alex
Alex started her journey with research using a Weinberg Summer Grant, which she took with her to a clinical pharmacology department at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. This led her to start at a new lab at Feinberg– bridging their interests in pharmacology with her interest in neuroscience. Alex spent her junior and senior years at Northwestern, during which she was awarded a Summer URG, working with this lab, and continued after they graduated in 2018.
For Alex, this time taught them what direction she wanted to approach science from. She said, “There was a lot of observation of myself and what path I wanted to follow…and how that fits into the greater scheme of…current neuroscience research either in that lab or elsewhere…It was a lot also, of figuring out what I wanted from a mentor and how I wanted those relationships to develop.” Alex also highlighted the importance of mentorship, especially as a first-generation low income student, in starting to think about graduate school and what that could look like. She stated how important it was to have “someone who understands what I’m saying and then can translate it into…the right terms…especially because no one in my family knew how to do that. [During undergrad] I was able to forge connections that I still have, like, I email [OUR staff] updates, I still talk to my first ever PI about like, how life is going.”
Alex also gave some advice when it comes to grad school and adopting a pet– recommending “the biggest thing about that, you gotta get the pet a year beforehand or once things start settling down after comps” to establish that bond and trust. She adopted her cat, Ki, the year she graduated!