Typical Tufts
Every once in a while, I disappear from the blogosphere (sorry!). It’s not because I don’t love sharing stores and advice with you. Sometimes, I just suffer from an extended case of writer’s block. I’ve been determined to write something super interesting, so I asked Justin, an admissions officer/blogger/awesome person, to help me brainstorm some possible blog topics. One suggestion was that I write about the Child Development research project that I am working on for Community Health credit.
Massachusetts runs this program called “Healthy Families” that provides a bunch of services to teen moms, since really young families tend to be high risk for a lot of not-so-great things. I fell into this project because I was rambling to my advisor about making summer plans while I was meeting with her to plan out my fall schedule. She let me finish rambling, and then offered me a position on this research team that she happens to run. Apparently, that is a cool story. Personally, I think that it is a boring story. It’s completely average.
I am just one of many students in just about every department at Tufts who walk into professors’ offices and walk out 30 minutes later with research positions or internships. Since this is so typical, I figured that writing a blog post about that experience would be a waste of everyone’s time. Then, I took a step back.
This is my third research project at Tufts, and each project has been super easy to get involved in. Being so involved in the research scene has made me forget that when I was touring schools a few years ago, I didn’t have any clue that I would get involved in any research, let along three very different projects on city, state, and international levels. I had no idea that I would be where I am right now (I don’t mean that literally because I’m actually sitting at work handwriting this post. I hope that I can read this later*). So, maybe this is a typical story and it isn’t anything special.
My research experience is not unique and most of my friends can relate to at least some part of it, but in the bigger picture, this is not typical. Not everyone at every school can say that they are writing a paper that is being submitted to a journal or that they have evaluated state programs and examined that effects of intercountry treaties. This isn’t typical for everyone, but it is typical for Tufts.
*There were a few words that I couldn’t read. Context clues are my friends.
