S-STEM Scholar Adel Karabegovic's Blog

     After learning a lot about caring for mental and physical health, I plan to do more work on my physical health actually. The past two years have been practicing quite a bit on mental health and techniques like meditation or self reflection. However, I feel as though I have neglected my physical health quite a bit and could do with setting up an exercise regiment, eating healthier, and finding time to not be just sitting in a chair all day. Physical health can be both a reflection as well as a driver of poor mental health.     My career goals, I wouldn't say have shifted but they did evolve with having been more informed of choices after university. It has been a long time and I remember going into college thinking I was going to be a programmer at some upstart company working in their basement all day. Now, I am much more focused on having a career either in research or lab work, hopefully with a focus in genetics. So I think the change has been rather...

    After reading most of Daring Greatly, I think the thoughts about 'armor' to protect from vulnerability can be applied to STEM in a lot of cases. A big part of succeeding at university is the mentality of, "I'm an educated person now, I need to be able handle 'x' assignment or 'y' project on my own." Or maybe something along the lines of living up to the expectations that society sets on people who aim to become professionals in a field. If you needed a bunch of tutoring and help to finish an assignment, are you really that good of a mathematician, engineer, scientist, etc? The answer is: yes, it does make you that good to reach for resources when assistance is needed, that's a part of being educated. Students might not see it that way though, they may think, "god, is this really the degree for me if I can't even do this? It's barely a lower-division course, what about the higher division ones?". So they may set up 'arm...

Do you feel that your identity (gender, race/ethnicity, family, culture, age, rural/urban upbringing, etc.) has influenced your educational journey and your mindset?  My family is from Bosnia, and they ran from the war in the 90's (about around the time I was born). We got the papers signed to opt-in to the refugee program a number of countries were offering and we ended up in the U.S., AZ specifically. At the time, my family only had quite literally the clothes we were wearing, no English, no connections. My parents worked hard to get us to a middle-class style of living and as such I was raised in not poverty, but not much better standards of living. The reason I'm typing this is that a big part of being raised by a family who worked hard to get you the opportunities for success ties that success to the expectation of hard work(fixed mindset I think). Thus, I grew up influenced in the necessity of needing a good education for success in life over anything else. This has had...

       I would like to start off this reflection by stating that this is actually the third introspection on myself concerning growth versus fixed mindsets. My first time was back in UNI220 Mindset Connections where I was on academic probation right after changing majors and dealing with depression along with other health issues. That time blew my mind as I did not realize the changes I could be making in my life by adopting a growth mindset over a fixed mindset. The second time I approached it was a semester later when I had learned a bit and have managed to cope with some of the issues, and I found the growth mindset as an important way to think but I had not actually applied the growth mindset .       One important way to measure it is the same way Carol Dweck states in her Ted Talk(that I've seen like 5 times now): Are you actually focused on understanding the lessons, study plans, or tests? Or are you more focused on getting a good grade, o...

      Thus far I have worked two jobs in my life, one was rather trivial at a movie theater and another at a hospital so at least for entry-level, no education required(which is a lie, a patient access representative needs three months education paid by the employer and then about a year of training to become relatively valuable to the company) type of job, I have some knowledge of what employers may be looking for.       My first and greatest experience that has given me teamwork, critical thinking, and communication skills was my internship with the NCEHSS program in the summer that was all about doing research. Being able to work with your peers on projects that are not gated by grades or strict piece-by-piece deadlines is a good way to build teamwork. Given two months to create a presentable research poster of a topic of our choice, my lab partner and I had to set up schedules, communicate results effectively, understand where this research le...

 Honestly, Environmental Science feels a bit difficult not because it isn't useful but because it is such a broad scope. I think this actually is more evident when I talk to my peers, where some are heavily invested into hydroponic research, soil, agriculture, entomology, and such. My own experience is showing that I am more geared towards microbiology research, specifically yeast and genetics. I am not only going after a degree in Environmental Science but also a certificate in Biomedical Research offered by New College. I was given advice by my mentor that it would be a good fit as it gives me a competitive certification for working in a lab setting that many people do not have. However, it does mean I will have to do one more semester in the upcoming fall, rather than graduating in the spring. If I were to be hired, I would prefer maybe a private sector where I can focus on products or research rather than government like the EPA where I feel it would be more bureaucratic and le...