How To Write A Personal Reflection Essay
1100 Words
4 Pages
I have learned a great deal this semester working as an undergraduate research assistant in the Pediatric Coping and Language Lab in the Marital Communication in Pediatric Cancer Study. Through my connecting experience this semester, I have learned more about the disciplines that are relevant to my Bridging Disciplines Certificate, in Social Inequality, Health and Policy with a focus on public health. I have also learned about thinking in an interdisciplinary way, comparing and contrasting different disciplines, and using my skills within different disciplines. My experiences this semester have also helped me to further foster my goals and interests. As the lab is in the psychology department, I have mostly had exposure to psychology. The
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Through this initial exposure that I had to research I learned a lot about how research in general works and especially in being patient and persistent in the research process. In the FG lab, we had to do the same repetitive procedures many times in order to get good results, which required a lot of patience and persistence. In my time in the PCL lab, I have used these skills in working with the Volunteer Coordinator at Dell Children’s as I tried to get my volunteer badge over several months and in being persistent in contacting families. I also learned the importance of keeping good records that were understandable not only to yourself but to other members of the team which has also been important in the PCL lab in keeping track of communication with participants. In my experience in FRI, I learned that I am probably not interested in pursuing purely lab based scientific research in the future but in my experiences this semester I have found that I might be interested in pursuing more people based research in the …show more content…
This has also aligned somewhat with my experience here that has been looking at things related to health outside of what most people think of when they think of medicine. I think that the experience I will have interacting with the families of children with cancer could help me to better interact with patients and their families in the future as a physician. Also this research may be useful to me in the future as I work with families and patients dealing with disease and the information learned in this study could be used to help those patients and their families deal with the stress of illness. This experience has strengthened my interest in the bigger picture view of healthcare. I am very interested in how different factors all interact to determine health outcomes, from the psychological to social so biological to cultural and everything else. This aligns with the public health strand of the BDP that I am earning because public health is concerned with more than just individual treatment. This research could potentially be used in the future regarding policies and programs to support families as they deal with the stress of having a child with cancer. The aspect of the study that will look at difference between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking families will also align with the social inequalities division of the BDP due to the
Through this initial exposure that I had to research I learned a lot about how research in general works and especially in being patient and persistent in the research process. In the FG lab, we had to do the same repetitive procedures many times in order to get good results, which required a lot of patience and persistence. In my time in the PCL lab, I have used these skills in working with the Volunteer Coordinator at Dell Children’s as I tried to get my volunteer badge over several months and in being persistent in contacting families. I also learned the importance of keeping good records that were understandable not only to yourself but to other members of the team which has also been important in the PCL lab in keeping track of communication with participants. In my experience in FRI, I learned that I am probably not interested in pursuing purely lab based scientific research in the future but in my experiences this semester I have found that I might be interested in pursuing more people based research in the …show more content…
This has also aligned somewhat with my experience here that has been looking at things related to health outside of what most people think of when they think of medicine. I think that the experience I will have interacting with the families of children with cancer could help me to better interact with patients and their families in the future as a physician. Also this research may be useful to me in the future as I work with families and patients dealing with disease and the information learned in this study could be used to help those patients and their families deal with the stress of illness. This experience has strengthened my interest in the bigger picture view of healthcare. I am very interested in how different factors all interact to determine health outcomes, from the psychological to social so biological to cultural and everything else. This aligns with the public health strand of the BDP that I am earning because public health is concerned with more than just individual treatment. This research could potentially be used in the future regarding policies and programs to support families as they deal with the stress of having a child with cancer. The aspect of the study that will look at difference between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking families will also align with the social inequalities division of the BDP due to the