In continuation of my first blog, I really wanted to highlight the experiences of my first couple of meetings with Dr. Admon. She was super open to our weekly meetings and having a flexible schedule which I was really appreciative of. We talked a lot about the importance of our research topic and how there’s not a lot of data essentially getting collected on rural and urban disparity specifically looking at maternal health outcomes. She talked to me about some of her previous research experiences and how she has become the physician she is today. Essentially, I was more than inspired.
We started to talk more specifically about the project we would be working on together this summer. She told me about the three different papers she was choosing to write for the summer and that she would present these proposals to me at our next meeting. I was grateful for how much effort she was putting in to making sure that I felt comfortable in the type of work that we would be conducting together for the summer and making sure that I felt fulfilled in an academic setting and professional development. She later presented three different projects to me and I ultimately chose the one that I felt I was most passionate about. This paper was on rural and urban disparities in health insurance for maternal outcomes. It was a topic that was somewhat ironically connected to the final paper I had written for my Women and Gender Studies Reproductive Health course just this last semester. I had talked about the paper I had written and how I had specifically focused on rural and urban disparities in Georgia. I sent my 20-page long paper to Dr. Admon and anxiously awaited her reaction. She told me how impressed she was with the diligence I took in my work. We both knew that this next upcoming project was going to be a great fit.
What made me really eager about starting the summer was that my mentor was already going above and beyond and making sure that I was all set to go every week with what I needed to accomplish and what our team’s short-term and long-term goals were.
Something that I was not expecting was that the project we were working on was part of a larger team. Dr. Admon introduced me to some faculty and PhD candidates at the University of Minnesota who were studying similar topics. I was super excited to collaborate with them however, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous to be in a room (or virtual room for that matter) with such incredible researchers. Our first team meeting went great. The women were so inclusive and open to teaching me about all the processes for this project. I was so grateful to be in a room as a sponge to soak up the mentoring experiences that I was getting not only from my mentor but the other faculty as well.
In my next blog, I’m going to discuss more specifically our project objectives and how crucial this topic is to be studying. I have quickly learned how limited the amount of research is on rural and urban disparities especially with Medicaid expansions in the last 15 years… more to come [Maya’s Blog #3].