Fleur Uittenbogaard

The pursuit of a college degree may be motivated by many things. However, underpinning them all is a desire to learn. My degree is one of neuroscience. Often called "the new frontier" of science, it is a relatively young field. And you can feel the excitement with each new publication, pushing the boundaries of human knowledge of something as intimate to us as our vary own minds. I have fallen in love with the field, and I hope to show you how it has shaped my thinking and become analogous to many parts of my education.​

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Coming into college, I, like so many others, was pre-med. This meant stacking my freshman year with chemistry, biology, and as many extracurriculars as I could physically fit into one week. My first two quarters felt like a blur-- new home, new roommate, new friends, new school. It was all happening so fast... then Covid slowed things down. Moving back in with my parents and losing a lot of those extracurriculars made me reevaluate what I wanted. I decided that rather than let myself be intimidated by things that felt out of reach, I may as well give them a shot-- I didn't have much else to do anyway. This burst of confidence led me to apply for research positions. Enter life-altering choice #1. 

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My sophomore year, I began researching in a Neuroscience lab on campus. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it quickly began to take priority over pretty much everything else-- why go to class to learn about biology when I could be in a lab, researching it instead? This did end up taking a toll but also led me to succeed more than I had ever imagined in regards to research. I ended up landing the 2021 NAPE Summer Research Fellowship that summer, where I got to experience full time research for the first time. I enjoyed it so much that I began to question my dedication to medical school. While I considered going the MD/PhD route, I figured that if my ultimate goal was research and not seeing patients, why bother with the MD part? Considering I had wanted to be a doctor for nearly my entire life, this led to a lot of internal turmoil. Looking back on it now I jokingly refer to this as my "Quarter Life Crisis". After much debate-- with myself, with my parents, with my mentor, and with my friends-- I settled on pursuing a PhD instead.

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While less actually life (or at least career-path)-changing, my second "life-changing" moment occurred when I was accepted as an Honors Peer Educator. This also happened early sophomore year, and led to many more years as a peer educator, and of Honors involvement generally. 

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I also learned a ton about myself during the graduate school application cycle. Writing my personal statement, looking internally to decipher my true motivation, and handling the acceptances and rejections that came with the application made for a lot of personal growth, in not a lot of time.

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Overall, I believe each of these moments has taught me a critical lesson. While I've detailed some of them here, you can view my portfolio as an anthology of moments from my undergraduate years that have shaped me as a person.