Student Perspective – Page 4

Autism Research at CHOP

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the 2018 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Luis Rosario, COL ’19

This past summer I had the amazing opportunity to work in the Biomagnetic Imaging Laboratory in the Center for Autism Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. During my time at the Biomagnetic Imaging Laboratory, I was able to develop many professional skills that I know will help me become a great researcher and hopefully physician one day. I was able to work closely with the researchers every day, learning how to interact closely with child subjects both on and not on the autism spectrum. I was able to gain a deep understanding and appreciation for this specific disorder as well as learn how to deal with certain behaviors that these subjects may have as a result of the disorder. I feel that these interactions have helped me develop an ability to interact with individuals that have been afflicted by a certain disorder, and these skills will allow me to interact better with patients in the future once I finally have a chance to treat patients.

Furthermore, I was able to understand how a research laboratory works as a result of the funding. I was able to attend weekly lab meeting and also participate occasionally as well. I gained the ability to be able to communicate effectively about projects I was assisting with in a professional research setting, which will greatly boost my skills in the time I take working hopefully in a research lab before I apply to medical school. Additionally, I was able to attend the Biomagnetic Imaging Laboratory’s annual retreat, which consisted of an entire day of various primary investigators presenting their current on-going research. I had the opportunity to interact with all the researchers as well as the research staff, and gain insight into all the work necessary for a research project’s completion. I was so lucky and grateful to be able to engage with the researchers as well as their work for that entire day, which would not have been possible without the funding that allowed me to work in the lab for the summer. Before I apply to medical school, I hope to use these skills to contribute to the growing knowledge of various mental disorders and dedicate time to assist in research that will hopefully make diagnosing and treating these individuals easier and more accessible.

I would not have been able to have these amazing experiences without the funding I received! I was able to develop professional skills that will help me in the future after graduation as well as gain confidence in my ability to contribute to a professional research setting. I am confident in that this experience has helped my professional development, and I am excited to apply these skills to help people that need it most in the near future.

Exploring Law in an International Context

This entry is by Cindy Luo, COL ’20

While I was interning abroad at the University of Minho Law School in Braga, Portugal, most of my weeks consisted of assisting the Assistant Dean in editing and compiling articles and master’s theses for an electronic law journal as well as going over research proposals and using databases to find specific sources. This was my first introduction to this type of work, and although I have no legal background, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of learning as I go and applying my new knowledge with each task. For me, one of the highlights of this internship experience actually happened in a classroom because I had the unique opportunity to take a LL.M. class in the European and Transglobal Business Law Department titled: “Legal Aspects of Investment in China”.

This class was taught by a Chinese professor who told us that it was her first time teaching a class in English. Initially, I was very intimidated to take a class with graduate students taught by a Chinese professor, but my fears and apprehension was soon overtaken by sheer curiosity and determination to engage with new people, new ideas, and new ways of learning. Professor Yi really emphasized comparative legal systems and frameworks; she encouraged us to engage in open dialogue and discussion about how the law works in our respective home countries whether it be Portugal or China or Brazil or the United States, etc.

In learning about the legal aspects of investment in China, I got my first taste of business law, international taxation law, contract law, and intellectual property law, all explained through a global context. While these fields of law never explicitly appealed to me as much as human rights law, immigration law, or criminal law, I was able to see how all these different fields are interconnected and relate in one way or another to social change and progress. Taking this course in conjunction with this internship allowed me to appreciate the universality of the rule of law and what it essentially means for people living in different parts of the world. It allowed me to think about the gap between what is written and what is actually practiced.

Throughout this course and this internship, I also thought a lot about what I potentially want to do after graduation, and particularly if law school is the right choice for me. Our final assignment for the class was to present and analyze a case study, gathering the basic facts of the case, the disputes, the legal issues, the judgement and reasoning. The hardest part of the assignment was making sense of the legal procedures in the case and interpreting the outcome through what I perceived to be very convoluted legal writing. But by the end of the class, however, I was proud of being able to contextualize what I learned about the Chinese legal system and framework of laws in relation to investment. More so than understanding the content, I was proud of being able to decode the complex, technical legal language. Likewise, the topics and the terminology of the articles and theses that I was editing became much more comprehensible after the class. All in all, critical thinking, logical analysis, and organized legal writing are some of the most important skills to develop as a potential law student; having this opportunity here in Portugal has been integral in helping me do that. As I come back to Penn and enter my junior year, I hope to be able to explore law on a deeper level and to gain more exposure to different fields of law. (I will be taking a Law & Social Change class as well as acting as the ambassador for the Law & Policy Sociology Interest Group). I am still finding my way and figuring things out, but this experience showed me that I have what it takes to succeed in law school if or when I choose to go. Being abroad here in Portugal and interning at the University of Minho Law School has taught me how to practice flexibility and patience–with myself, with others, and with the world. You can choose to learn at your own pace, and there’s certainly a difference between taking your time and wasting your time. I learned to trust my instincts and to be more self-confident in going after what I want. I understand that you do not have to be the smartest person in the room to contribute something valuable. You do not have to be the most outspoken to have your voice heard. And you do not have to have a law degree to help someone. You just have to be willing and open-minded and embrace the challenges, uncertainty, and failures that come along with the process. Understand

Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research

This entry is by Esther Yoshiko Liu, GSE ’19

With my goal of becoming a university-based Language Policy & Planning expert, I arranged my unpaid mid-Master’s program internship at the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research at University of Western Cape this past summer. Through my Research Fellows position there, enabled by generous Penn Career Services funding, I built an experiential base from which to discern whether and where to pursue doctoral studies.

In South Africa, I tried on the linguistic anthropologist’s hat for fit – an awkward, floppy hat by design. Channeling Hortense Powdermaker, diving into the process of inscribing community contexts and the full humanity of others, discovering how culture shock and difference are the heart and soul of my field; these tasks of suspending my own norms to subject myself to others’ constraints, and immersing myself as deeply, widely, and openly as possible in human interactions and communicative events were rehumanizing and restorative. They strengthened my intercultural agility and built confidence that I am well wired for this line of work. Through engaging with Southern theory I grew in understanding of my own University’s place of power and privilege, which granted perspective and conviction on how to steward these well through my own academic pursuits.

I collaborated with global leaders in the field of Language Policy & Planning, notably, through working at the 20th International Congress of Linguists. There at my first major academic conference, I was surprised by the approachability of the top scholars (whom I’d previously encountered only by way of footnotes), how invested they were in encouraging graduate students and young/beginning researchers, how they embodied the professional values to which I aspire. I was entrusted with mentoring undergrads and Master’s students in ethnographic field methods, and appreciated “interning” in the fullest sense: My supervisors treated me like a colleague, and gave me concrete opportunities to be (as if) one of them.

I evaluated pious ambitions of South Africa’s multilingual language policy, which grants 11 previously stratified languages equal constitutional footing against the actual implementation of these policies on the ground in creches, colleges, and communities. Outside of 9-to-5 office hours, I got enveloped into the wide web of Western Cape families, and welcomed into their life events, including weddings, funerals, baby showers, 50th birthday bashes, and more — an anthropologist’s dream! All this occurred in a climate of resource scarcity, as Cape Town is limping out of its recent water crisis, and as the historically disadvantaged university where I was based continues to establish itself as a top research institution in Africa. This context accentuated how language differences are implicated in negotiating access to vital resources, and whose concerns get voiced and heard.

The role of language in political conflict and social inequity is often ignored. But within Educational Linguistics, my division at Penn GSE, we examine how language practices and policies (especially through institutionalized education) can either disrupt or reproduce these economic and educational inequalities. My summer research experience put these processes of interactional sociolinguistics under the microscope, and confirmed my abiding interest in linguistic justice as it relates to diversity and human flourishing. It extended my commitment to work through linguists’ lenses, stewarding the great resources and training at Penn to contribute to illuminating the correlative and causal relationships between social fragmentation and language grievances.

The Effects on Language Acquisition in Children

This entry is by Breyasia Scott, COL ’20

I was drawn to this PURM project at the Child Language and Learning Lab because of my minor in American Sign Language/Deaf Studies. My minor required me to take classes in the Linguistics field, and from there I became really interested in how children acquire language.

At the Dr. Schuler’s lab I ran a training experiment called the Pattern Learning Study. The goal of the Pattern Learning Study was to see how kids learn language in an inconsistent environment and how they differ from adults at doing so. Inconsistent input is language input that contains mistakes or errors. This often occurs when the language teacher is not a native speaker of the language that the child in learning. In this particular study, children learned an artificial language called Silly Speak in which they would expose to two different plural markers, ka and po. In the exposure portion of the computer game, ka was heard 67% of the time, making in the majority plural marker and po was heard 33% of the time, making it the minority plural marker. In language acquisition, it is typical for children to overgeneralize and use the form they hear the most, whereas adults tend to replicate the percentage that they hear. Therefore, in the Pattern Learning Study, in the production level of the game, where participants had to provide an ending, we expected children to produce ka 100% of the time and po 0% of the time. In contrast, we expected adults to produce ka 67% of the time and po 33% of the time.

This summer I learned that it takes years to develop research and the conditions must be perfect. It’s easy to coerce children to give you the answer that you want but that results in unusable data. Furthermore, I learned quite a lot about myself while working at the Child Language and Learning Lab. While I loved some of the more interactive parts of research such as reading the literature reviews on previous work done in the field and playing with children participants to make them feel comfortable in the lab, I didn’t really enjoy the more technical aspects like inputting data and learning how to code. Because research requires all of these steps, I don’t think the field is quite right for me. I, however, look forward to reading literature reviews of the studies conducted by my peers in the future.

Addressing Gender-Based Violence Through the Lens of Intersectionality

This entry is by Zeba Raisa Shah, COL ’19

When I first looked at the Futures Without Violence website, I was fascinated by all the different areas in which this organization was involved. Often, the broad concept of gender-based violence (GBV) is reduced to just a few things that make media headlines, while many other aspects of this issue are overlooked. My internship at FUTURES in Washington, DC this summer has not only taught me to combat this oversimplification of what constitutes GBV, but further delve into the many insidious ways in which it can take form. As someone who identifies as a Bengali, Asian American, Muslim, first generation, low income, immigrant, woman of color; intersectionality has always naturally been a key component of my vision of the world. Through this internship experience, I learned the importance of looking at GBV through an intersectional lens that recognizes the diversity within this massive category of violence.

In addition to regularly attending relevant briefings and hearings on Capitol Hill, some of the projects I worked on at FUTURES this summer included attending conferences regarding reducing sexual harassment in the workplace, researching ways to better aid survivors of human trafficking entering the workforce, advocating for survivors of domestic violence seeking asylum in the U.S., and finding programs that assist survivors of elder financial exploitation and abuse. In each one of these projects, I learned to take an intersectional approach. For example, sexual harassment in the workplace is an enormous issue anywhere; but when we look specifically at high-risk low-wage industries such as the restaurant, service, commercial cleaning, janitorial services, hospitality, and agriculture industries, etc., the risk is exponentially higher. Women in these industries are also much less likely to report incidents of harassment or have resources readily available for them. This is particularly relevant given that women – especially women of color – are significantly over-represented in these industries. For instance, even though women make up less than half of the overall workforce, they make up two-thirds of the low-wage workforce. Moreover, African American women’s share of the low-wage workforce is double their share of the overall workforce. Another clear illustration of this can be seen with domestic violence. While domestic violence is an enormous problem for many women, further disaggregated data indicates that immigrant women are at much higher risk than U.S. citizens, due to institutional barriers such as limited English proficiency, fear of deportation, and a biased legal system, which make it nearly impossible for immigrant women to access resources to achieve safety or justice. These are just some of the many ways in which intersectionality play a pivotal role in gender-based violence. Without taking into account these missing pieces, it is impossible to cater the resources at the Workplaces Respond to Domestic and Sexual Violence: A National Resource Center and beyond to directly impact the root causes of the issue. Thus, a truly effective survivor-centered method of combating GBV requires an intersectional lens.

Interning in DC this summer has been an incredible privilege. Despite being engaged with politics and policy-making since I was young, physically being in the nation’s capital made a huge difference in seeing change happen first-hand. Whether it was standing outside the Supreme Court with signs within minutes of the “Muslim Ban” decision, or attending a press conference with notable representatives from Congress celebrating the introduction of a reauthorization of VAWA (the Violence Against Women Act), I was right there. I wouldn’t have had the chance to witness any of this had it not been for my internship with FUTURES. I leave DC with a further solidified understanding of intersectionality and how advocacy and organizing efforts need to be interconnected and inclusive. I am beyond thankful for this experience, and I know that everything I’ve learned this summer will strengthen my future work in policy, advocacy, and civic engagement.