Over the years I have had folk reach out with a variety of questions – e.g., How was the transition from high-school in Barcelona to doing an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college in the US? What was the application process for the Fulbright like? How did you choose a mentor for PhD and Post-Doc?
Of course, I am not sure anything I have to say is really all that insightful. But I thought I would at least acknowledge here that I REALLY enjoy being able to answer these types of questions and help out wherever and whenever I can. In that spirit, I just wanted to leave my contact info here and list a few personal experiences that may resonate with someone.
If I can help in any way, please contact me at jeanpaulnc [at] gmail.com.
Here are some academic (yet personal) experiences I have been through and can reflect on.
- My mother is Mexican and my father is Belgian. I grew up mostly in Mexico and Spain, but did my schooling in French. The first semesters in college I took notes in Spanish, as my English wasn’t good enough to keep up with the lectures. Probably one of the things I wish I would have known about is how class credits work in the US, and that you can 1) transfer credits from high-school, 2) develop your own “major” and apply credits pretty much as you wish.
- I did a bunch of research as an undergrad, mostly at other academic institutions because where I went to school there wasn’t such a thing as ‘labs’. I worked at Yale, University of Minnesota, and Brown University by the time I graduated from undergrad. There are a ton of opportunities to do research in the US over the summer and get paid for it (e.g., REUs, SURFs, etc.).
- I moved from a small school in the US where I basically knew everyone, to doing a Fulbright Scholarship at the Swiss National Institute for Technology in Lausanne. Most people in the lab did not know what a “Fulbright” was when I first joined, and many of them are some of my best friends still today.
- I moved back to the US for graduate school, at Vanderbilt University. This involved GREs (though thankfully seems most programs are getting rid of these now), interviewing at a dozen schools all within a few weeks, personal statements, etc.
- During my PhD I had the chance to experience what research was like in industry. Honestly, probably the period where I learned the most out of my whole graduate tenure. Some of the people at Facebook taught me more about research and computational skills than anyone else. At the same time, I realized how much I love thinking about the big picture and that I truly wanted to lead my own academic team someday.
- I moved from doing human psychophysics to doing rodent neurophysiology (and even some NHP work). CRAZY how long these projects take. Seriously.
- Joined a team of ~60 individuals in an attempt to do “Team Science”. Some things I really like about it, others less.