Week 10 – Samuel Ogunsola

Hello World,

It’s the last week of my 10-week research journey here at Rice University. I have learned quite a lot with the most noteworthy being able to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice-versa without using Google. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete my poster over the weekend but I was able to have it completed on Wednesday. I am very grateful for the REU and specifically for Dr. Faiza for her help in printing the poster for me. The majority of my time this week was spent on the poster. From editing to practice presentation, I feel a lot more prepared than I was about a week ago. My work on Polymer is not complete although due to time limitations, I wasn’t able to include it in my poster.

 

This week was primarily focused on the poster so there isn’t a lot of updates in terms of the research. However, thanks to some insight from Ricardo, I’ll write this blog on the topic of self-reflection. Looking back, to the very start of this program, my expectations coming in were very different. My idea of research was very basic and not as expansive as it is now. I was expecting research to be more hands-on, with little time spent at the desk. However, my experience with this research has been quite the opposite and I am very grateful for it. The numerous hours spent at my desk have helped me unlock something that I never thought I would, being self-taught. During the covid era, like most people, I did not really learn anything because I was required to take the initiative and “teach myself”. This led me to believe that I would never be able to teach myself things and would always need to be taught by someone else. This program helped me break that barrier and made me realize that all I was missing was determination.

This program also exposed me to what graduate school really is, something I never thought I would be heavily considering. More years of schooling was the last thing I wanted to do and on the surface level, that was all graduate school was to me. After the workshops and exposure to various graduate students, I realized that graduate school is more than more years of schooling. In fact, the Ph.D. level is barely any schooling given that you’re only taking about 1-2 classes and everything else is research. Overall, this program has benefited me in ways I wasn’t expecting and I am very grateful for that.

I would like to thank the National Science Foundation

I would like to thank Dr Faiza and Mr Mathew Cushing

I would like to thank the R-STEM REU program

I would like to thank Rice University

and lastly I would like to thank my REU cohorts for being so supportive. I hope you all end up in wonderful places and achieve your goals.

 

Thank you all.

Cheers,

Samuel Ogunsola