Fourth Year
The past year has been one of tremendous personal growth. A year ago at this time, I was frantically trying to find a summer co-op after my original plan to study abroad in France was cancelled due to the pandemic. Almost a month into the summer semester, after giving up virtually all hope of finding one, I got an offer from a company in Florida, and less than a week later I was driving down to the Sunshine State. While it wasn’t France, I enjoyed every minute of the two months I spent in Florida, making the most of my time by going to the beaches that were 10 minutes from my apartment, the crystal-clear springs, the Everglades, and hanging out with new friends I met at work. As we all learned in 2020, you can never predict the future. What I thought was going to be one of the most boring summers ever turned out to be one of the most fun. With the hardships and losses that so many people have faced over the past year due to the pandemic and everything else going on in the world, I feel incredibly fortunate that the setbacks I faced were only temporary, and that I still managed to make strides toward accomplishing many of my personal and professional goals.
In the fall, I was searching for a spring co-op, and again was getting frustrated with my lack of success. After applying to dozens of positions, I got an interview with a company called Edwards Lifesciences. While I had never heard of them before, the co-op position was for their location in southern California, so I didn’t need any more convincing! A few days after the interview, I was offered the position, and it finally felt like all the work I had put in throughout college, and even high school, had paid off. My manager told me that one of the main reasons they chose me was due to the experience I gained during my first co-op rotation, in which I worked in heart catheter manufacturing. Ironically, during that first rotation, I didn’t enjoy my job at all, and felt like I wasn’t progressing in the direction that I wanted my career to go. And yet, it turned out that the time I spent at my first co-op, despite not loving it, ended up helping me get the co-op of my dreams. This taught me to have patience. You may not be exactly where you want to be at any given point, but as long as you are constantly striving to learn and better yourself, then that is progress. Since then, I’ve tried to reframe my mindset on the activities I spend my time doing. Instead of seeing success as a result – a co-op offer or a promotion or congratulations from a manager – I began to see it as more of a process of continuous incremental growth. This also helped reduce the anxiousness I would sometimes feel when facing an important task or deadline. Rather than fixate on a specific outcome and worry about how to control it, I learned to focus instead on doing the best possible job at the task at hand in that moment.
My co-op experience at Edwards has been nothing short of life-changing. It has reinvigorated my passion for the field of biomedical engineering and has exposed me to the multitude of exciting and rewarding career paths that are available to me. I’ve met so many amazing people, from fellow co-ops to early career engineers to seasoned managers and directors. I realized how much fun it can be to go into work when you’re working at a company that cares about its employees on a project that you enjoy and that will directly impact people’s lives. I am looking forward to getting more experience in the cardiovascular field during my senior capstone project this fall, where I’ll be working on implantable optogenetics devices in a lab at UC’s College of Medicine.
Going into my last year of college, I intend to utilize every resource available to me within University Honors, CEAS, and UC as a whole in order to make the most of my remaining time as a Bearcat. I am very excited to take part in the Sticky Innovation Honors seminar this fall, which combines my two passions – art and scientific innovation. I also am looking forward to helping build community within UHP through my role as a leader in UHP Ambassadors. As I continue to refine my goals and interests and think about what direction I want to go in after graduation, there are still times when I feel overwhelmed. But by taking to heart the lessons I’ve learned over this past year regarding patience, resilience, and growth, I am confident that whatever path I end up on, I will be well-equipped to deal with the surprises that I encounter along the way.
In the fall, I was searching for a spring co-op, and again was getting frustrated with my lack of success. After applying to dozens of positions, I got an interview with a company called Edwards Lifesciences. While I had never heard of them before, the co-op position was for their location in southern California, so I didn’t need any more convincing! A few days after the interview, I was offered the position, and it finally felt like all the work I had put in throughout college, and even high school, had paid off. My manager told me that one of the main reasons they chose me was due to the experience I gained during my first co-op rotation, in which I worked in heart catheter manufacturing. Ironically, during that first rotation, I didn’t enjoy my job at all, and felt like I wasn’t progressing in the direction that I wanted my career to go. And yet, it turned out that the time I spent at my first co-op, despite not loving it, ended up helping me get the co-op of my dreams. This taught me to have patience. You may not be exactly where you want to be at any given point, but as long as you are constantly striving to learn and better yourself, then that is progress. Since then, I’ve tried to reframe my mindset on the activities I spend my time doing. Instead of seeing success as a result – a co-op offer or a promotion or congratulations from a manager – I began to see it as more of a process of continuous incremental growth. This also helped reduce the anxiousness I would sometimes feel when facing an important task or deadline. Rather than fixate on a specific outcome and worry about how to control it, I learned to focus instead on doing the best possible job at the task at hand in that moment.
My co-op experience at Edwards has been nothing short of life-changing. It has reinvigorated my passion for the field of biomedical engineering and has exposed me to the multitude of exciting and rewarding career paths that are available to me. I’ve met so many amazing people, from fellow co-ops to early career engineers to seasoned managers and directors. I realized how much fun it can be to go into work when you’re working at a company that cares about its employees on a project that you enjoy and that will directly impact people’s lives. I am looking forward to getting more experience in the cardiovascular field during my senior capstone project this fall, where I’ll be working on implantable optogenetics devices in a lab at UC’s College of Medicine.
Going into my last year of college, I intend to utilize every resource available to me within University Honors, CEAS, and UC as a whole in order to make the most of my remaining time as a Bearcat. I am very excited to take part in the Sticky Innovation Honors seminar this fall, which combines my two passions – art and scientific innovation. I also am looking forward to helping build community within UHP through my role as a leader in UHP Ambassadors. As I continue to refine my goals and interests and think about what direction I want to go in after graduation, there are still times when I feel overwhelmed. But by taking to heart the lessons I’ve learned over this past year regarding patience, resilience, and growth, I am confident that whatever path I end up on, I will be well-equipped to deal with the surprises that I encounter along the way.
