Welcome to Student Employment Blogs!

 

My name is Bri Rainey and I am an Undergraduate Career Peer in the Career Development Center. As a senior here at IU, I have learned a lot about career development and best ways to gain experience as a student. We will be bringing back installments to our Blogs all about Student Employment this semester, so stick around and let’s learn from one another!

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Upon first arriving at Indiana University, I was not sure which direction I wanted to take my academics besides majoring in Psychology. Upon starting my psychology course work, I was able to start to understand the different areas and topics that fell under the umbrella of psychology. While learning about the different topics and subjects of cognitive psychology, social psychology, and experimental psychology helped me figure out what I was interested in and what I wanted to learn more about in my future.

It wasn’t until I started to see some of my peers having conversations about their research labs or capstones that I started to wonder if I was missing something in my academic experience. I mean, I was a second semester sophomore working part time at the Career Development Center, tutoring students in Chemistry, and also volunteering at Middle Way House, but research? I hadn’t even thought that it was a possibility for myself. I didn’t have any close connections to any one who was already in a research lab or any professors who were running labs and I definitely didn’t even know the steps to start to put my foot in the door of researching at a Big 10 school. In my eyes, it was a dead mission before it even began.

But one day during a meeting with a Career Coach from the Career Development Center, I mentioned that I was interested in doing research in the Psychology department while expressing my hopelessness and my thoughts of being behind and/or underqualified. Instead of confirming what I already thought and ushering me in a different direction like a club or group, she asked me if I had looked into it at all or even applied and made sure to reassure me and my college career so far. So I looked into it, applied to a lab, and got an interview a few months later.

I’m now in my second year of being a part of the Hugenberg Laboratory that researches Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination. My first year in the Hugenberg Lab consisted of me being a research assistant and running participants in experiments and logging the necessary data. It was a way to not only get my feet wet in researching and understanding the process, but it also allowed me to gain additional skills that I could use in my future careers. I fell in love with the research that our lab was doing and I knew that I wanted to do more in my second year with the lab. My second year so far has consisted of me completing my senior capstone project on Perceptions of Protestors while working directly with students in various years of graduate school and meeting with them, Dr. Hugenberg, and Dr. Green. At the end of the first semester of my capstone I have gained plenty of skills related to literature reviews, project proposals, and reading data from studies. There are so many opportunities available and connections to make being a part of my research lab and I’m excited to continue to explore them during my final semester at IU.

While I was able to find my interest in research and get involved with projects that intrigue me, I did feel confused and hopeless at one point in my career. I hope learning a little about my journey at IU can help direct people to possible paths and encourage students that getting involved isn’t all about perfect timing and knowing the perfect person, but just talking with people who can either point you in the right direction or direct you to someone who can. It’s important to remember that everyone’s college experience is not the same and that you should not compare where you are to where other people are, but instead use it as inspiration to guide yourself along your path.