Welcome to Live and Learn, a production of the Honors Program at the University of Connecticut. I am Danielle Chaloux and this week we’re hearing from students and alumni at last Fall’s networking night sponsored by the student alumni association. If you’re looking to connect with fellow students and UConn grads this semester’s networking night is on Thursday, March 1st in the Alumni center starting at 6:30pm. Visit saa.rso.uconn.edu for more information.

 

DC: “What made you come to the networking event tonight?”

“Oh I attended the CLAS networking night and I gained a lot of information through them as well about how to connect to other people and what networking really is.”

DC: “can you define it?”

“It’s going out and creating a connection with someone else that can help guide you further in your education or in your future.”

 

DC: “so as someone who has the career experience, you’ve made the next step successfully- I’m presuming- how have you been able to do that? and what would you tell students that are looking at that next step?”

“Well, part of what we discussed tonight, it’s going to be at some point in your career it will be who you know and not what you know and it doesn’t hurt to listen to an opportunity. It may be an opportunity you don’t think is right for you, but it never hurts to listen. Because sometimes the perception of what you think the opportunity is about and what the reality is can be completely different. So having every chance to listen and sit down and talk and explore it is important. So I would say that in itself is great. I remember taking away from, my brother graduated, his commencement speaker said, “in your career, it’s not until you find your fifth job until you find your career” so you’re fifth stop is not where you’ll end up, but where you’ll kind of plant roots”

DC: “put all the pieces together”

“Yea”

DC: “And what has uconn taught you in your career”

“I’m a people-person and I think a lot of that came from the courses I took like public speaking and acting courses and brought out different traits of mine that I can use in my career every day. So I can say I took that from UConn.”

 

“So my biggest recommendation is to join an activity and be actively involved. There are so many student activities, you can have leadership roles, and get experience, and meet people and immediately become engaged with a group of people.

 

“I think don’t worry as much as you’re probably worrying right now because I think the benefit of being a liberal arts student at UConn is the fact that you have such a broad and diverse background. And embrace that and know that that actually is what the future holds for you. Employers are looking for candidates that have certain skills and what they bring to the table and they are not going to look for that niche. You don’t have to solve for everything as a freshman and a sophomore the opportunities will be there. I think if you embrace what UConn offers, by the exposure that you have, and again all that you will learn over the course of your four years, as each year progresses it’s going to become a little more clear. And even when you graduate with that degree I think you do speak to alumni members where they started out in isn’t always where they ended up.”

DC: “So where did you start?”

“Communications was my major and after failing an accounting class and realizing perhaps business is not where I want to be but that’s where I thought when I came here as a student. But then bridged into communication and from there realized I can use that as I went into marketing because, again, I was able take al lot of the skills I used here and, again, it’s things like working in a team environment, it’s being able to juggle and prioritize projects, it’s being able to articulate, being clear in how you write and how you speak. Those are just some of the core skills the university helps you refine and gives you exposure and opportunities to learn further. That’s what really takes you further, I think when you leave here with your degree you have that opportunity, no one is rigidly looking to pigeon-hole you so don’t torture yourself and do it on your own.”

 

“I would tell my younger self to pay attention and be more aware of what you’re looking for. Also, my younger self figure out what you want early because then you can start building up for that moment. If you start your first year and you keep building up through your fourth year you’ll eventually get what you want and I think that’s the best thing you can do.”

 

“A good thing you can do when going to any networking event is having questions prepared to ask the people you are speaking with so that you’re never stuck in awkward silence. If you don’t know what to say”

DC:”What questions are on your list?”

“Oh where are you from? I know someone from that area.

have you been to bla-bla-bla near that area? What do you do at your company? How long have you been at your company? And things similar to that.”

 

“The only thing I can talk relative to networking is…it is such a small world out there that you will run into people over and over again in your career and if you developed those connections, you are going to run into those people again. Maybe as a competitor, or as a customer, or vender, or whatever. And, you already have a relationship developed that will help you in your job. And if you don’t and if you develop a not-so-nice relationship, that can hurt you as well but the whole issue of networking can be wonderful. And, as I said, helping you in the future, you just don’t know what the future is going to bring.”

 

DC: “And what are you doing for work?”

“I work in human resources”

DC: “okay and so how did you get there from where you started”

“Just networking because I met a friend from here at UConn when we first started at the West Hartford branch so when I cam back from over seas I was in contact him and he helped network me a job where he used to work.”

 

“It’s all about the people. Regardless of what business you’re in, it’s a people-business. You’ve got to be able to deal well with people and that will be part of your success is dealing with people”

 

“Whatever comes your way, grasping it and going with it.”

DC: “And what have some of those opportunities been?”

“For example, I was really interested in medicine. So I was stressing out trying to find shadowing experiences, ended up working at a baking shop over the summer and the baker’s owner, her sister was a PA, so I was able to shadow an open heart surgery done by her sister and that was something just by chance, it wasn’t anything I was seeking to happen.”

DC: “So what have you learned from networking? Kind of generally”

“From networking most importantly I learned it doesn’t matter who you’re talking to because someone knows someone who knows someone or whatever they may do, if it’s not exactly what you want them to do, once you start talking to them you can change your mind about your whole career path.”

 

That’s all for this week, if you’re looking for a chance to win an Honors long sleeve t-shirt visit honors.uconn.edu/podcast where the code word is networking.

[intro music]

[Danielle Chaloux]: Welcome to Live and Learn, a production of the Honors Program at the University of Connecticut. I’m Danielle Chaloux and this week we’re hearing from students.

[Taylor Edgar]: Hello, my name is Taylor Edgar. I am a junior biology major on the pre-med track, and I am in Dr. Heather Read’s lab, researching auditory physiology and sound discrimination.

[DC]: So when you go into the lab, and you say, “Hello I’m here!”, what do you do?.

[TE]:For most of the day we’re running what we call behavior, which is the actual experiment. So the morning crew comes in and they set up all the technology, they boot the computers up, they get the rats ready. We have a set of rats that we bring up from the vivarium. Throughout the day we are bringing the rats in one by one, and putting them in what we call behavior boxes, where the experiment itself is run. They are very controlled environments. And so when you’re working your shift, you could be moving the rats in and out of behavior boxes, you could be recording data, you could be running the rats on what we call enrichment, which is where we put them in little wheels for them to run around in which is their exercise. Near the end of the day you could be weighing the rats, and calculating how much food they should be getting because they are on a food restriction diet to ensure they are motivated  to actually complete the tasks that they do. But essentially throughout the day you can be doing whatever needs to be done.

[DC]: And when the rats go into the behavior box, what do they do?

[TE]:So, when they are in the behavior box, they are in this polymer cage within a much larger box, that’s soundproofed. They are essentially subject to little bouts of sound. So they have sound currently, they are in phase zero. And they essentially listen for a sound coming from the left or a sound coming from the right. And depending on where that sound is coming from, they go and tap on a little port, and if they get a sound direction correct then they are rewarded with, we give them strawberry flavor ensure, and if they are wrong then they get a little fifty second timeout where the lights come on and a little sound plays that they don’t enjoy. To initiate each trial they need to poke on a center port, so phase zero is essentially them training to discriminate between the direction of the sound.

[DC]: And what is the goal of the research? What is the question that will hopefully be answered?

[TE]: So again like I said, they are in phase zero right now. The next phase is taking away the direction of the sound, so they have to discriminate the type of sound and whether they associate it with the left or the right. Essentially, what we’re trying to do is train them to discriminate sound and once we achieve that we are going to launch into something called optogenetics, which is a new field which that essentially goes into the brain of the rat and we essentially able to inhibit certain parts of the auditory cortex and from that we’re able to see which part of the auditory cortex is controlling that sound discrimination, that ability to tell what a sound is and where it is coming from and what it means. Research into the auditory cortex, exactly what it does, what the parts do, is currently what we’re trying to achieve.

[DC]: And how did you end up in Dr. Read’s lab?

[TE]: A lot of times people on campus they, the reason they land in labs is that they’ve contacted professors, they’ve connected through the teachers they’ve had or they’ve emailed people that they’ve seen the research of and say they’re interested. And after a lot of emailing and a lot of communication, eventually they do land in a lab. I was actually connected through one of the current lab leads. She is a brother in my academic fraternity, and she knew that Dr. Read’s lab was going to lose a lot of members because they were all graduating, and she knew that I was looking for a lab and she thought I would be a good fit. So she put me in communication with Dr. Read, and that is essentially how I got the position.

[DC]: This would be another example for those out there listening of networking.

[TE]: Networking with other students, because people always think networking is, you know, with adults, people older than them that have already achieved high above. But networking can just be with your peers on campus.

[DC]: If you were to give yourself a piece of advice a year ago, or two years ago, what would be the advice you would give to your younger self?

[TE]: Well, to my younger self, I would probably tell her it’s ok to fail. Because I came from a very competitive high school, and because of that, I’m very grateful for being able to go there because it allowed me to develop the skills I needed to be in the Honors Program and to do well in school. However, it did put a weight on my shoulders when I hit college that I expected to be a straight A student just like I was in high school. And, for college, it’s a good idea and it’s a good thing to strive for, but it’s not always achievable. And it’s ok if you get a B, if you get a B-, in a class, if you get lower than that you can always retake the class if it’s really that big of a deal. And, it was a very big stressor when I was a freshman, even when I was a sophomore, that I thought I was a complete failure because I wasn’t doing as well as I did in high school. So being able to say, “Hey, it’s okay. You’re still doing well. You can still do this.” would be a good bit of advice.

[DC]: Is there a resource on campus that you would recommend to your peers? That they might not already know about?

[TE]: Specific to Honors or specific to UConn?

[DC]: No, just to UConn in general.

[TE]:  I think everyone is aware of this resource, but a lot of people are hesitant to use it, as I was in my beginning years. Knowing that your professors they have office hours for a reason. And they want to see you at those office hours, because they want to see that if you don’t understand the material or if you’re a little unsure about something, they want to help you. They’re there for that, they don’t want to see you fail! For me it was very intimidating having to tell myself, “Hey you need to see a professor you can’t deal with this on your own.” So definitely seeing your professors during office hours, seeing them anytime you can.

[music break]

[DC] For a minute, I’d like to go back to the idea of failure that Taylor talked about. For high achieving students, failing an exam or a class or not getting the internship you applied, even getting less than an A is devastating. I know, because I’m one of those students who didn’t get a B in anything until college, and when I saw it on my transcript I went home and cried. If this hits a little close to home, on Friday January 26th, at 4PM in Laurel Hall 306, the Honors Program is hosting a “Stay Whelmed” workshop, on failing well! Members of the enrichment team will share their own stories of failing, and we’ll be talking about finding the silver lining in failures. Attending this event counts toward Sophomore Honors. That’s all for this week, for previous episodes, and to enter in to win an Honors Program long-sleeve t-shirt, visit honors.uconn.edu/podcast, where the code word is, you guessed it, failure.

[outro music]