Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program at UC Davis

To close out the year on an energetic note: Emari Mann created a TikTok to depict a typical day in her life as a PREP@UCD scholar: professional development, research, social time with her cohort, and more research.

Check it out!

Clarification: the postbacc program is PREP@UC Davis, which differs from the one referenced by a commenter. 

Thanks, Emari! We will miss you and the others in the 2023-2024 cohort!

Winning a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) award is a major achievement for aspiring scientists and researchers. Beyond the financial support it offers (which, let's be real, is fantastic!), the GRFP presents amazing personal and professional growth opportunities. In this blog post, l explore the journey of applying for, winning, and thriving in the aftermath of the GRFP.

The PREP scholars decided to explore a bit further past Davis and headed to Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz county! 

To explore the multitude of hiking opportunities in NorCal, we explored one of the 49 redwood state parks California has to offer. Not sure if we'll hit the other 48 anytime soon, but it's good to know they're there. 

We had a few goals when going into this hike: 

Every year for the past 20-ish years, the T32 Training Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology hosts an annual retreat at Fallen Leaf Lake to foster cohesiveness and community.  In October 2023, we joined the UC Davis T32 graduate students and faculty on their retreat.  

A brisk 3.5-hour drive to Fallen Leaf Lake, a smallish lake near Lake Tahoe, took us to a cabin-style conference center (and resort where Stanford alumni spend their summers) that has stood for more than a century. Over this retreat weekend, I took in the wooded scenery and intriguing science.

During my time as a PREP scholar at UC Davis, I have had the opportunity to meet amazing scientists who've visited Davis to give seminars. This fall, these included two speakers from the Storer Lectureship in the Life Sciences series.

After a whole year here at UC Davis, my time here has come to an end. There are many creatures that I will miss in this charming college town. 

Growing up in Los Angeles, California, my lifestyle was very different from the slow-paced world of UC Davis. At UC Davis, instead of being surrounded by buildings and traffic, I found myself surrounded by nature and agriculture. Soon after arriving at Davis, I found myself slowing down and taking in the beautiful scenery.

As I approach my last few weeks in Davis, I have a satisfying birds-eye-view of my yearlong journey as a PREP@UCD scholar. This past year has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows. I enjoyed the highs of submitting the NSF GRFP, completing the polar plunge with my cohort, and networking my way through graduate school interview season.

Overcoming mental health challenges has been a formidable and paradoxically critical part of my path towards becoming a scientist. I vividly recall spending two months in an intensive outpatient program at St. Josephs Hospital, attending daily group therapy sessions to manage my depression. While I had hoped that this period would be enough to regain a sense of normalcy, it became apparent that I needed more time and therapy to heal.

As a Southern California Native, Davis and Sacramento had been my only taste of what Northern California was like. Davis’ 113 ℉ heat wave back in September was unbearable, the hottest climate I ever had the misfortune to experience; the rest of the month still hovered around the 80’s. To say I was excited to finally experience weather below 70 ℉ at San Francisco in early October was an understatement. I couldn’t wait to experience this famous city that was well known across the globe and would always pop up in cultural media and cinema.

After nearly two months of editing our NSF GRFP essays, all five of the 2022-23 PREP scholars finally submitted our applications and immediately packed into cars and drove east to Fallen Leaf Lake.

We spent the weekend of October 14th-16th at the highly anticipated Molecular and Cellular Biology T32 Retreat. We'd been told that we would hear science talks from graduate students in the training program, network with other students and faculty, and explore the lake (situated about 1 mile from Lake Tahoe). 

Time management proves to be one of the most difficult tasks for a prospective graduate student to master. Not only in juggling classes and research, but also finding time to unwind and develop work-life balance. Research on the matter showed that a decrease in work-life balance is linked to decreased physical and mental well-being, productivity, and increased stress.

...the month when all prospective graduate students wince from the realization that application due dates are around the corner.

I used to hate writing. I still do somewhat. In high school, English was consistently my worst subject. Coincidentally, it was the subject with the most amount of writing. But at the end of my junior year, I was given an assignment that changed my outlook on writing. I had to emulate the tone of a short story with personal stories. While writing this particular essay, I had an epiphany: write in a way that I stayed interested. I realized that I hated writing because I hated the way I wrote. So, I changed. I wrote like I thought. Short sentences with no verbs.

I was scorned on my first attempt applying to doctoral programs. I knew it was a big leap going straight out of undergrad into a PhD program, so I applied to a few, along with some masters and post-bacs, to see where I fell on the spectrum of applicants. When I received continuous rejections from PhD programs, their feedback was always the same; I needed more experience. This was after spending a few hundred hard earned dollars to apply to these programs. I was discouraged, but I moved forward and took the advice.

-- Maribel Anguiano

Since starting college, I’ve realized there are various versions of myself. I am the daughter of Mexican immigrants, a fanatic of 2000’s RnB and Hip Hop, an avid camper, and a scientist.

The lack of representation in the sciences has made me feel like I need to adjust certain parts of myself to “fit in.” I compartmentalized my identities to help give myself a sense of belonging in whatever setting I was in. These adjustments, some consciously and others subconsciously, drained me over the years.