This blog has been slightly neglected with a few sporadic updates. The thing is, it might get even more sporadic because I can see myself being really busy this school year.

The good news is, I got accepted into a research lab at the university! After 1-2 weeks of sending emails and scrambling around to fill out paperwork, I think it’s safe to say I’m officially enrolled in a research lab. Let me tell you, it was really stressful and more complicated than anticipated because paperwork (with signatures) are due and enrollment deadline is today (Friday) but my professor has been away and won’t be back till after the deadline, so I had to run around finding a solution to that. Now that that’s over with, I have bigger things to worry about – like the actual research work itself! It’s about 10 hours a week, and a little intimidating being with Ph.D’s and graduate students.

Our university prides itself on having large undergraduate involvement with research opportunities lead by professors and graduate students. I honestly never planned on doing research because it didn’t feel necessary. It is a must if you plan to go to med school – but that’s not for me. And I couldn’t really see myself doing research as a career. But here I am, taking a dive, going against my fears, and going for it. I figured, this is my last year of university and I will never have this opportunity again to participate in something like this. It’s worth doing for the experience, for something good to put on my resume, and even to explore another career option.

I had the opportunity to join another lab that seemed really easy (undergrads have responsibility of clean up and collecting data), but following the advice of a few others, I decided not to take it, since it was more like busywork that wouldn’t have challenged me and led me to learn a lot.

I’ve never had lab experience before so hopefully things don’t go disasterous for me *fingers crossed* I’m also planning to get in a few hours of work somehow (may or may not be possible depending if someone will actually hire me for only a few hrs a week haha), and hopefully volunteer at an optometry office this winter break.

It’s gonna be busy, busy and I think if I still want to end my college transcript with good grades, I’m going to have to use my free time really wisely – and yet not get burnt out either. Like I mentioned in the first two sentences of this blog post, I don’t think I’ll have much time to update my blog every day like I really planned to anymore and I might have to settle for sporadic updates, but if everything goes well & I use my time wisely, I should still be able to be here regularly. I’ve always had a real issue with time management, but I haven’t given up yet and I’m (hopefully) ready to go up against the challenge.