S-STEM Scholar Valeria Bernal's Blog

The experience of networking this semester has been truly helpful. I think that networking is essential for STEM students because it comes extremely useful when you want to look for a new job or experience. Furthermore, it made me realize that even though, it can be scary to reach out to successful people, you will be surprised of how willing they are to share their experiences and give out any advice.  As for the NQUIRE symposium, I was unable to attend. But,h ere is what happened to me. I reached to like different five people through LinkedIn and only one of them wrote back. I was feeling already very awkward due to the fact that nobody was reaching back out. However, at the very last minute, someone was willing to reach out! I had a zoom meeting with Dr. McBroom; an associate veterinarian in the valley.  I was so nervous to ask her anything but as she asked me questions about my student life, I realized that she had gone through the same and I felt like we connected so quic...

  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...