Welcome to the Blog!
- hdpgetsherphd
- Dec 24, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 6
Hi friends! My name is Hanna, or as I am known on Tiktok and Instagram, HDP gets her PhD! Here I plan to share more insight on life in graduate school, immunology, medicine, public health, and science. My passion lies with science communication and my goal is to make science approachable and accesible for all. For my first post, I wanted to share a little bit about me, where I come from, my education, as well as my career goals and goals for this blog.
About Me
I was born and raised in a relatively small town in central Illinois. My mom teaches elementary school, and my dad is a plumber, so me becoming a scientist was on no one's radar. I had never met a scientist before I decided to become one. To me, being a scientist felt beyond reach, a "little kid" job, like being an astronaut, professional athlete, or President of the United States. Real people do all of these jobs, but it was never something that felt feasible to pursue. But here I am today- a scientist!
Hey that's me!
When I applied to colleges, I originally wanted to be a teacher. More specifically, I wanted to be a Spanish teacher, because I have always been fascinated with language learning and really enjoyed it in high school. That all changed when my sister was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. After her diagnosis, I found myself scrambling and reading online to try and understand her condition and the lab results we got back. In turn, I ended up becoming a translator of sorts for my sister and my family, helping them understand what was really happening with her health.
My sister and I in high school (2018), at my college graduation (2022), and her college graduation (2024)
This ended up sparking an my interest in both medicine and science communication. I didn't understand why it was so hard to get to the core of what was really going on, and why it took so much effort for me to understand. From here, I changed my major to molecular and cellular biology, and started my undergraduate studies. At the time, I thought that I would end up pursuing a career in patient care and clinical practice, even getting a certification in phlebotomy in efforts to gain clinical experience. This changed when I joined my first research lab sophomore year.
In late 2019, I reached out to the only immunology lab at Illinois State University looking for some research experience. I interviewed with the two professors who ran the joint lab. After being offered a position doing summer research with the lab, I was ecstatic- but also had no idea what I was signing up for. I knew the job description, and about the field work that I would be doing, but I didn't yet have a grasp on what doing research was really about. I started my first summer of research in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning about how research actually works while in the throws of early COVID prompted me to add a minor in public health, because I wanted to learn more about epidemiology and why certain health mitigation strategies are used.
Basically the only pictures I took of my first summer of research
Junior year of college I took a course on microbial pathogens that really dove into mechanisms of host-pathogen interaction and I soaked up everything. That class is what made me decide to fully pursue science and research instead of a career involving clinical practice. I attended my first conference as I was applying to graduate programs in the fall of 2021. In my final semester of college, I was accepted into my PhD program at the University of Iowa and presented at multiple research symposia. The weekend I graduated college, I also got to fly to Portland, OR for my first national scientific conference!
Flash forward to today, I am now 2.5 years into my program and passed my candidacy exam in spring of this year. Since then, I have been focusing on my dissertation work and writing a review that will hopefully be published early in the new year. Through writing for both my comprehensive exam an this review, I have been reminded of how much I enjoy it, and am looking to expand my experience and portfolio. That brings us to this blog. Here I will focus on a wide variety of things related to science, medicine, immunology, microbiology, public health, graduate school , and beyond. Below I have listed some general ideas for topics and focus that I will expand on over the coming year:
Some topics I plan to write about and share here include:
What is it like to become a scientist?
What are the pathways to becoming a scientist?
What is life like for a PhD Student?
Grad School life + Tips
What skills are important for scientists to hone beyond the bench
My Scientific Discipline, Immunology
Immunology Basics
Types of Immune Cells and what they do
Understanding basic immune functions
What roles do these cells play in different immune conditions and diseases?
Immunology in the news
Assess news reports related to immunology and science and compare to what the literature says
Current work of mine and my lab, including manuscripts, articles, conferences, etc.
Medicine and Public Health
Basics concepts in public health
Medicine in the news
Feel free to reach out with topics you are interested in hearing more about or questions about anything relating to science and graduate school!
Thank you for reading,
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Hanna
Comentarios