Wrapping Up The Semester
12/20/21
Abraham Maslow
“If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life."
The end of semester and first semester with McNair has truly been a journey. There's a saying, "jack of all trades, master of none". However, many people do not know though the continuation of that quote. "But oftentimes better than a master of one". This quote resonates with me throughout this semester as I'm still a student and I'm still continuously learning.
Mentor Search
Going into the McNair program, I learned about the expectations and requirements prior to the start of class. I had to find a mentor that would be able to provide guidance and who willingly passes their knowledge and expertise towards research. Prior to meeting with mentors, I was told to get an idea of what field of subject I'm curious about researching. This first task is what narrowed down my mentor search significantly. I investigated into what each Psychology professor within the department was researching and curated a list of professors that focused their study on mental health, addiction, and recovery. After several meetings with professors, I felt the most support from Dr. Muehlenkamp. I knew how knowledgeable Dr. Muehlenkamp has been with the McNair Program and trusted that she could assist in choosing a research topic and to develop a research proposal.
Finding a Research Topic
The process of finding a research topic was relatively easy. I knew I wanted to focus on some form of mental health and recovery process. After discussing with Dr. Muehlenkamp on her work involving suicide ideations, I grew fondly to the topic. Throughout the process the discussion and collaboration brought me to the current topic of studying what factors facilitate self-recovery within individuals with non-suicidal self-injury disorders. I want to find out how factors of emotion regulation improvement, individual therapy, post therapy support from family, emotion regulation, and online services provide recovery and effective treatment for prevention.
Where am I now and what's next?
Working with Dr. Muehlenkamp on grant and the literature review will allow for preparations of the final submission for the ORSP grant. The development of my research protocol such as the online Qualtrics questionnaire that will include two different scales measuring attitudes, perceptions, knowledge and recovery of individuals is to be developed through-roughly. I have found that there's some fine-tuning to be done with my research and work to be done over break. My hope is to develop more information and get in a comfortable position ahead of schedule.
