Grad Diaries V: Graduation!!! 👩🏾‍🎓

I GRADUATED!!!!!!

Yup, I’ve officially completed my masters degree!! 👩🏾‍🎓💛 I’ve had my diploma for some time and I still can’t wrap my head around it. When I got my acceptance letter for grad school I was in shock and I felt the same way when my degree audit confirmed graduation. The last two years have seriously been a journey, to say the least. Grad school is TOUGH. I was scared to go, to be honest, but I am so glad that I applied and continued to push myself throughout the program. I also couldn’t have done it without my family, friends, and the amazing community I found at my school. I am so, so happy with how my grad school experience turned out on multiple levels. Compared to undergrad, this experience was eons better for me from the faculty and staff to my peers and academic/extracurricular experiences.

That being said, basically completing the second half of my program virtually was less than ideal and a serious challenge. I was taking Applied Biostats last March when we were sent home and the transition was brutal. This class was rough and adding on the challenges of virtual learning it was probably one of the most challenging things for me in the past year academically. During the summer and fall, I was also completing my capstone project which focused on the prevalence of a chronic disease in adults and a component of the physical environment. I am very fortunate that my principal investigator and advisor were so supportive and helpful especially given the circumstances. I was involved in every step of my project including the initial background research, the IRB submission, coding to produce results and interpreting analysis. I really liked that I got to make all the decisions I wanted with analysis, which I did under guidance from my PI. This was opposed to my assignments in class where we were given specific guidelines to follow. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t stressful but I did really enjoy experiencing the different aspects of running a study. 

Additionally, I worked at the health department in a job directly related to the pandemic. While I wasn’t working as an epidemiologist in this role, it was my first public health role. This job was interesting and a good introduction for me into how public health initiatives are implemented in a local state (both state and municipality-wide). Surprisingly one of the more stressful pats of the job was initially dealing with all of the paperwork for things like taxes, payroll, and insurance completely on my own. In my other experiences, which were managed by my school or a special program, this paperwork was streamlined for me. But here I had a lot more responsibility in managing these things myself, which may have been a result of things being online. In the end, I still found it to be a valuable lesson. This experience was also very challenging because of its connection to the current state of events. Mentally and emotionally it was a lot to handle and I had to learn how to manage stress in a way that I had never done before.

This summer I’ll be participating in an internship with a pharmaceutical company working on statistical programming and analysis. I applied to this program because I wanted to get real-world experience and convert the analysis skills I learned in class into applicable job skills. I’m also hoping to see how I like this role and determine which aspect of research I hope to be involved in the future. Public health and healthcare are such broad fields so it really takes time to figure out what you like and what role(s) I’d like to have. And I always try to remind myself that no career or journey is completely linear. So if you are ever wondering what you want to do next and comparing yourself to others…DON’T! I am realizing that nothing is ever completely perfect and no one has life figured out. Everything just happens in due time. 😌

N.B. I haven’t decided if I will continue the Grad Diaries or if I will be starting a new series but it has been fun documenting my experiences as a grad student and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well!

Until next time,

– Tatyana x