S-STEM Scholar Valeria Bernal's Blog

  Cultural intelligence refers to “the ability to understand how we feel, think, and act when engaging across cultural settings, in multicultural situations, and with people of diverse ethnicities, gender, ages, abilities, and backgrounds.” Going back to the seminar, I stopped to think and compared my daily life to the people I interact with every day and how high their cultural intelligence is.  After doing some thinking, I realized that I have met a lot of individuals that lack cultural intelligence and therefore, responsiveness. Even though they might have not been aware of this value, the lack of curiosity is also obvious. Moreover, I believe that everyone at some point in their lives has experienced curiosity to know or learn more about other cultures, either because you know someone outside of your culture or just out of curiosity. Even myself. I have failed to apply cultural awareness in my life before and later on, I realized that if I had been more curious, I would ha...

Professional identity refers to the beliefs and values you share with other professionals in your field of interest. I think that it is what brings you close to other connections within the same branch because of the similar interests one may have. I think that professional identity sometimes begins to shape when you start working in your field of interest and can actually see how important it is to develop your professional identity. For instance, my major is Biology and my main focus is animals. I did not really shape my professional identity until I started working as a technician. I realized how much impact the knowledge, ability, and skills I can provide to the job can have in a vulnerable community like stray animals. I think professional identity in STEM is necessary to provide the best of us.  Something I remember from Dakota's presentation is that making connections sometimes can be scary. But, it is okay because the worst thing that can happen is that the person you are t...

When I was about to transfer to ASU, I felt very nervous. I like to think of it as "good stress" but part of that stress was also negative stress. I was excited to attend a big university and have the opportunity to be part of a scholarship. On the other hand, I was nervous because I was already used to GCC's campus and amenities. I was used to the friends I made at GCC and overall the student experience. To me, change can be overwhelming sometimes.  Just to think that I had to figure out where everything was and where to go for tutoring or student services was definitely one of the things that stressed me out the most. I also remember being scared of my car being towed. Not because I didn't have a parking pass but because I was constantly thinking "what if I didn't park in the right parking lot?"  However, my girlfriend, Bibiana was someone that helped me overcome this anxiety of being a transfer student because she was already going to ASU. She showed ...

This semester I am taking Biochemistry, Invertebrate Zoology, a drawing class (which I am enjoying!), a women's sexuality class, and I am doing research with Dr. Ferry. I feel pretty confident this semester. I have prepared a planner to help me keep on track with tasks and assignments. I am excited but also nervous because I hear people say Biochemistry is harder than organic chemistry. I think everyone has a different experience, and I sure plan to make mine a smooth one by practicing active recall and learning progressively as the semester passes. My goal for this semester is to take care of my mental health more while balancing school, work, and life. I tend to put too much pressure on myself sometimes, and it doesn't have the best outcome. I have decided to stick to a schedule that will keep me on track with homework, study, sleep, and "me" time. 

This semester has been beneficial for me as I now understand a little bit more about databases. I honestly had not had much exposure to them before; if I had, I would have been very confused about them. In the past, I related a database as something that could only be physical (like a room where you save files and data), which did not sound appealing to me. But now, I understand that we have digital databases that make life so much easier for us when handling large amounts of data compared to using spreadsheets in excel or google sheets. Moreover, this class offered a project that helped us apply our database knowledge from a spreadsheet to the SQ lite database program. My partner and I chose to work on an Opioids dataset from the CORGIS website. This dataset focuses on the mortality rate of opioids categorized by year and people using the drugs (race, gender). The first step in building the database was to build an ER diagram, which was quite challenging initially. Secondly, we had to...

  I am delighted to say that I have begun to pick up healthier habits, and I am starting to take care of myself more. I plan to determine a sleep schedule to keep my sanity and be more efficient throughout the day. Moreover, since I started college (back at GCC), my goals have changed massively. I went from wanting to become a journalist to science. Even though I always knew I wanted to study science, I would prevent myself from doing so since I was scared. I felt like I was not enough, terrified of failure.  I am still scared of failure. Yet, I recognize that I must not forget that I am also human, and I will make mistakes. When I look back at the first sessions of the semester, I remember feeling like I finally belonged somewhere. Furthermore, I realized that my classmates would relate to the fear of failing or not being successful. The topics that we covered this semester were not only helpful, but they caused an impact on my life, and I hope they impacted my classmates too...