169 Research Reflection by Haley Parsons

Faculty Mentor: Katie Baucom (Psychology, University of Utah)

I can confidently say that my experience doing research at the University of Utah has been the greatest learning opportunity of my undergraduate career. The tasks that I have accomplished working in the HEART lab for the past 2.5 years have been invaluable, as they have allowed me to apply skills learned through classwork to real experiences working in the field of health psychology research.

As a ballet and psychology major on the pre-med track, I have had to learn a lot about myself and my learning style in order to find success in my academics. I have found that the extensive time I have spent in the ballet studio has had a huge impact on my capabilities in the academic classroom. Because of the expectations I have faced in the ballet studio, I am easily able to learn new information, but without physicality, the information quickly fades away. I believe that this is the reason I have benefitted more significantly from working in a research lab than from any of my psychology coursework. As an RA, I was expected to quickly put information I had recently learned into action and immerse myself in a process as opposed to the rote memorization expected of me in much of my classwork. This helped me to grow as a writer, critical thinker, and collaborator. At the beginning of my time working as an RA, I was given the task of cleaning interview transcripts for a project assessing the implementation of the National Diabetes Prevention Program to Latine adults by Lifestyle Coaches. Listening to these interviews sparked my interest, and I was eventually given the opportunity to take on the project myself with the help of a graduate student. Being able to recognize a personal interest, express that interest, and choose the way in which I wanted to work with the data set was a really empowering experience for an undergraduate to have. I felt support from all directions, which gave me the space to learn how to ask for guidance when I needed it. Additionally, I felt challenged in ways I hadn’t thought were possible, as I was encouraged to push myself to write effectively about my research process, present my preliminary findings at a research conference in Seattle, complete my honors thesis, and collaborate to formulate a manuscript for publish in a research journal.