Personal Narrative: My Interdisciplinarity Journal

The future is a scary, but also exciting, thing to think about. I feel lucky to have been given the opportunity to take this course where exploring our education and our future was the whole point. I feel as though I learned a lot during the duration of this course, but I haven’t really had the opportunity to put it into practice yet which is why I am glad this paper was assigned. It gives me the opportunity to really explore my future in ways I haven’t done so yet. In order to really see how this course has affected me, I must first look back at old assignments to see how I have changed since the beginning of this course and during the duration of this course.
Looking back to my very first journal I wrote for this course is weird to me. I
was so excited to be starting college; I had no idea what was in store for the next four months.
In my journal I said things like “I am so excited for this school year” and “I cannot wait” (“My First Day at UIS”). Don’t get me wrong, I am still happy to be at UIS. I think the excited just wore off and all the stress from all of the assignments and papers and exams is catching up to me! One other journal that I wrote for week seven of the semester was simply titled “Interdisciplinarity Journal.” My views on this topic were influenced by a reading that I was assigned for class. It states that interdisciplinarity is defined as “combining or involving two or more academic disciplines or fields of study” (Augsburg). Before taking this course I had never heard of the term “interdisciplinarity” before. But I am glad that I now know what it means. In my journal I wrote, “When a person focuses on one discipline it can close off so much information from him” (“Interdisciplinarity Journal”). Before taking this class I would have never thought about how incorporating multiple different areas of study could help solve a problem or complete a task. I am glad that I know that now because I definitely believe that it will help me
while furthering my education and even while working in my future career. Another area that the assigned readings affected my outlook on is civic engagement. I always have thought that volunteering was important, but because of a reading assigned in class, I now know that volunteering has a direct correlation with psychosocial well-being! In the reading it says that “Multiple studies of adults point to positive relationships between subjective well-being and various forms of charity, volunteerism, or kindness toward others” (Bundick and Flanagan). Before reading this, I never really thought about how civic engagement could effect a person’s psychosocial well-being. I questioned how the two were linked though, but it was later answered in the reading. “Helping others may be psychologically rewarding in and of itself since knowing that one is contributing time, money, and/or effort it the provision of the public good is internally self-rewarding” (Bundick and Flanagan). After reading and discussing this reading, I have actually been getting more involved with volunteer opportunities! I want to do whatever I can to make sure I stay mentally put together during my four years in college! Plus, I find volunteering fun and most definitely rewarding. I think that reading influenced me the most because it actually effected my life by encouraging me to become more civically engaged, which I hope is making me a happier person! I am going to continue to volunteer as much as I can even after this course ends. Now that I have taken some time and looked back on the past four months in this course, I need to look ahead to my future.
Like I said above, the future is a scary but exciting thing to think about. There are so many unknowns, but hopefully with the right education I can achieve many of my career and life goals. I am majoring in Clinical Lab Science. This degree will allow to me work in a hospital laboratory setting. Luckily for me, it is almost guaranteed that I will get a job once I graduate. According to the UIS website, there has been “100% job placement for the past 3 years for those graduates seeking employment in the medical laboratory profession” (“University of Illinois Springfield”). Because of this fact, I am pretty confident that I will be able to secure some sort of career once I graduate. However, my dream career might be a little harder to obtain. I want to work in forensic science once I graduate from college. This may seem easy enough, but in the Springfield, Illinois crime lab, there are about 200-400 applicants for every one position opening (Kunkler). There is also a rather long hiring process. First you must have at least a four year degree in science, then you must submit a CMS 100 state job application, then you must earn a grade of an A on the pre-employment exam, then you have to perform well in multiple in-person interviews, then you must pass a background check, a drug screen, and a polygraph test (Kunkler). Once through that whole process, you have go through another long process of training. Despite these facts though, my dream is to still work in the state forensic science laboratory. I want to have that career because it has multiple different aspects that I want in a career. I has the science aspect that I love, it has the criminal justice aspect that I find interesting, and it also gives me the opportunity to help people. If I were to get a job in a forensics lab, I would possibly get to help catch criminals which would help a lot of people in the end. Also, it has the criminal justice aspect that I find interesting like I said above, but it doesn’t involve me putting myself at risk like police officers do. It is just the perfect blend of everything that I want in a career.
Some things that I learned about myself through the research I did for this paper does support the kind of career that I want. For example, forensic science in and of itself is a career that is interdisciplinary. Like I discussed above, it involves both science and criminal justice. It also involves law in some cases because sometimes forensic scientists have to present what they find in court in order to put a criminal away. If I do end up working in this field, I will need to know how to work with people from each of these disciplines. If a forensic scientist didn’t know how to interact with people from the criminal justice or law departments, he wouldn’t get much work done successfully. I believe that interdisciplinarity plays a huge role in the success of working in a forensic science career.
The lifestyle that I want for myself is a simple one.
I want to stay here in Illinois so I can stay close to my family. Like I said above, I want to work in forensic science, which pays about 71,040$ per year in Springfield, Illinois (“Average Salary for Forensic Science Technicians”). This is just an average though, and I don’t expect to make that much, especially when I just start out. I expect to earn somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 dollars per year. Either way, this is definitely enough to support the lifestyle that I want for myself. I want a lifestyle very similar to what I had when I was growing up. I would like to have a family of four: me, a husband, and two kids (ideally one boy and one girl!). I want to have a simple house that has a lot of character and charm. I want it to be big enough for my kids to have their own rooms. It is also really important that I have a room for my library (I own a lot of books). But I don’t want it too big. I don’t want spare rooms that are never used because I just think those are pointless. I also want both my future husband and I to each have a semi-nice car. It doesn’t have to be a Porsche (although that would be nice). Just nice, safe cars. I also want to be able to afford nice things for my kids. What I mean by nice things are things like nice toys and clothes. I want to be able to afford nice presents for their birthdays and for Christmas. Once they get older I want to be able to afford to buy them things to decorate their
rooms however they want and I want to be able to afford to buy them nice things for the annual school supply shopping trip. Another thing that I think is essential is I want to be able to give my kids an allowance. My parents gave my brother, sister, and I a monthly allowance and we had to buy our own gas, car insurance, toiletries, and clothes. This helped me learn how to manage my money before I started college. I also want to be able to afford to take small vacations every year or two. When I was younger my entire family went to Kentucky every year. Some of my favorite memories come from those trips and I want the same for my children. I do believe that my future career in forensic science will support that kind of lifestyle.
Most of society values individual freedom, individual achievement, autonomy, and independence. I am no exception. As a Capitol Scholars Honors student, I do believe that, for the most part, I am actualizing those values. As a Capitol Scholars Honors student, I am living in Lincoln Residence Hall. This has given me individual freedom from my parents. I have more individual freedom now to make my own decisions about things. In the same way, I have to be the one to be responsible to do my work and to achieve good grades, especially being an honors student. I am working hard to achieve my own personal goals, so I definitely actualizing the value of individual achievement. I’m not perfect though, and in some areas I do fall short in actualizing these values. In one way I fall short is in independence. I am finding it hard to become totally independent. I still feel slightly dependent on my parents. As a Capital Scholars Honors student, I need to work more on becoming more independent. When it comes down to it, those societal values are the same as my values. I value everything listed above, even independence which I need to improve. I value these things because I think they are all important for everyone to have. I also believe that if everyone had these same values, the world would be a much better place.
In conclusion, this course has been very helpful to me. It has helped me find my own values, and it has helped me to figure out what I want to do with my life. Looking back at my work at the beginning this semester is weird but it shows me how far I’ve come in just a few short months. Looking back through the readings just reminds me about what I read during this semester and the discussions we had in class. Overall I am glad that this course was required because I feel like it made me a better honors student overall.