I sat down to listen to the podcast with Dr. Dawn Basely, who has achieved so much throughout the years. Near the end of the podcast, she gave a lot of advice to science students, but what stuck out to me was the advice on failure creating success (1:01:07 to 1:01:44). In these last three years of my degree, I have realized how scared and anxious I have been about failure. I held myself to such high standards and did not even think of failure as an option. Since undergrad is so competitive, students and professors do not talk about the importance of failure. When Dr. Basely mentioned it in the podcast, that was one of the first times I heard that failure is vital in my four years of undergrad. I remember writing my LSAT and did not do well the first time. This did disappoint me but also motivated me to push myself more. The next time around, I did better than my goal. So, I do agree with Dr. Basely. Listening to the podcast and understanding the importance of failure made me realize that failure had pushed me to do better on my LSAT.
As a science student, I believe I struggled a lot with communicating my ideas. My advice as a fellow science student is that we should learn how to communicate science literacy. In my degree, I realized that I found it hard to talk about scientific topics and convey my ideas about general science topics to others even after three years. Especially during COVID, when everyone talked about the pandemic, I found it hard to communicate my ideas. In science, we learn much information and can explain it on paper, but when it comes to the general public, it is sometimes hard to convey our perspective or ideas. Therefore, I highly recommend having conversations with your friends and family about current and scientific topics for practice. Also, communicate your ideas to others without hesitation! I believe a critical factor in communicating science literacy is confidence, so it is crucial to practice and understand all your information when discussing a topic. From one science student to another, start talking about science more causally, so you do not struggle when conveying your ideas. This is a great skill to have, especially if you are going into research in the future!
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 