Hello there!
My name is Malee Davis, and it is nice to meet you. I will be a senior in the fall which is both exciting and very nerve-wracking. I will be completing a double major in both biology, health, and society, as well as women’s and gender studies (WGS). I work as an RA, and in my free time, I volunteer for CS Mott’s Children’s Hospital and for the Women’s Hospital. My interests in both general studies and research are broadly reproductive health-based: people’s experiences with reproductive healthcare, cross-cultural examination, assisted reproductive technologies, birth, and different birth practices.
Over the summer, I will be working with my mentor, Dr. Lindsay Admon, an OB-GYN at Michigan Medicine, to help her with her research on short-interval pregnancies. I am not entirely sure what to expect because this would be my first time participating in a formal research fellowship. However, if it is anything like the research I did in high school, I believe I will be kept busy. I do have many hopes, though! One thing I would really like to do is apply what I have learned in my WGS classes to this experience. Theory to praxis, so to speak, although bell hooks would disagree that there is a divide (haha). I am also eager to dive deeply into new material and learn new research skills while I am at it. Lastly, I would love to build rapport with my mentor and receive guidance in my pre-health journey if they are open to it.
I think the biggest challenge I will encounter is not getting distracted. The bulk of my experience in the fellowship is remote, but staying inside at a desk makes me a bit fidgety. However, the interesting research material should mitigate that to some degree. As for the skills I am bringing to this experience, I believe my experience with Excel and PowerPoint would be helpful to some extent. I also believe that I am pretty good at using a search engine to look for research papers.