The Girl that No One Saw Coming

You have to love McNair seminars, I do. Isa and Maria are alumni that came to visit us today to talk about their experience being members of McNair, applying to graduate school, and living the dream. Their stories were enjoyable and eye opening in many ways. I was surprised to learn that both girls faced so much rejection on their road to success. They both applied to universities that rejected them and they had to choose different paths then they had originally intended. This is my greatest fear when applying to graduate school. I don’t cope well with failure and rejection. I take the rejections so personally and I see more and more that rejection is a part of life and being able to move on is really the success.
I told Maureen and Lynn how excited I was about some of the prestigious biomedical programs I had researched and they both said that I should go for it. I am stilled worried that I am not good enough or smart enough to ever get accepted into these university. Until recently, I never even considered myself high ranking school material. I was just some nobody, invisible, who has no footprints yet. I would really like to be the girl that no one saw coming and who surprised everyone.
I think it is interesting how applying to a PhD program is so much more than a GPA and GRE score. When we read the applications of students we decided that the prestigious school and grades didn’t seem as important as what the person did and who they were. Our applicant Dan Gerous was so much more than a student or a prestigious name he was a person I could see working with and succeeding in his field. I hope very much that the programs I apply to care about who I am. Consider the person I am and if they think I would succeed in their program. In the end they have to accept all of me not just the student but the girl who learns through example, who needs an active mentor who cares about their students success, a girl who excels in a program with understanding and encouragement, a girl who will work to exceed the expectations of the program that she loves to be a part of as a way to thank them for the opportunities given to her.
The last lesson I learned was that things in life always happen for a reason. Isa academic career seemed to be full of moments where things didn’t turn out just as she had planned or expected but it all worked out in the end. She didn’t have funding for school right away and out of the blue she ran into a friend who helped her to get a job. Later on at Michigan State (which wasn’t her first choice in schools) she had found the support of a wonderful advisor (who she only met because of a natural disaster), changed her Ph.D., and got fully funded. It is times like these that I think that things will all turn out in the end.