Well... to whoever is listening right now, Howdy! I know that might sound like a corny southern thing to say, but it's pretty common at the University I go to. So yeah I'm deciding to record a podcast and we're going to discuss many topics. But at its core, I want to focus on two things.

1. I want to give a guide on the graduate school application cycle, specifically the Ph.D. cycle
2. I want to help other women of color get involved in research

I feel that the graduate school application it's very subjective on who you talk to and every school has their little application for what they do. I feel like it's very much "he said to do this", well "she said to do that". So there's not just one website you can go to and have a very comprehensive guide on what you want to do or like go to a physical website that has a list of stuff you need to do like undergrad. I want to help demystify this process and document my journey really as I want to go to grad school myself. 

For me, this is a great way for me to articulate my thoughts as I want to apply for graduate school. This is helpful for essays to explain what my involvement is, what I've done, why I am here, why I want to pursue a career in research, and why graduate school. So this helps pretty much address these questions over time.

I realize now that I've just been talking about these topics and the core of this podcast. But I haven't even said who I am. So my name is Angelina Baltazar. I am a junior Biomedical Engineering major with a Neuroscience minor, and I want to go to graduate school. I want to pursue a Ph.D. in Neuroscience or Biomedical Science or in a related field like that. I feel ever since I got involved in research during undergrad, I fell in love with it. It's changed my life. It's changed how I see things, how I approach problems, and I want it to continue changing my life in the future. So that is the short synopsis as to why I want to go to graduate school. But I’m also pretty involved at my university. I have stated this, but I joined my research lab as a freshman. I am an Engineering Honors Ambassador, Undergraduate Research Ambassador, and I am pretty heavily involved within my student government. Now you may not know what that means and that's okay. I am going to go more in detail within the next few podcast episodes and talk about what I have done, how to get involved in these opportunities, etc. So you'll be hearing more about that. 

But yeah, I wanted to focus on me documenting my experience going to graduate school from talking about my ideas to my involvement to starting my application cycle and discussing all of this with you. Talking about finishing my application, what essay requirements are there, how the interview process is if I get an interview, and maybe I would get accepted to graduate school while documenting it. So this is a pretty critical time in my life where I am starting to think about going to graduate school, starting to form these ideas, and setting my career path towards actually doing this. I feel it's a really good idea to document this to give this process a guide for other women of color, other women, or just anyone who wants to be part of his process and wants a career in research to look and see how it all works. 

But another aspect of this podcast that I want to focus on is diversity in STEM research. Now, this may be obvious, but it may not be. Historically, STEM research has been dominated by white men, and women of color have just started to get their foot in the door. We've just started to get recognized and considered as researchers. This is only within the last 10-20 years, by the way. This is not during the past 50 years. No. This is only the past 10-20 years that this has been happening to get our foot in the door. I have some statistics about this. Currently, around 1% of all Ph.D. candidates are Latina. Around 5% of Ph.D. candidates are African American women. Even in my major, this might be surprising but probably not because I live in Texas so I kinda see a different statistic, but from starting as an undergrad majoring in Biomedical Engineering to working in any field of Biomedical Engineering only 2.6% of those Biomedical Engineers are Latina. That is just insane. 

Why you may ask? I don't know. There are a bunch of reasons why these low percentages are there. But I know there are a lot of barriers. Even though I know I want to pursue a career in research, I've taken advantage of resources and made sure my path was clear, I still get a lot of backlash for being a Hispanic woman and it's hard. When I try to explain it to my friends who aren't minorities, I try to think, "well I still get the backlash even with knowing everything or knowing a lot about the opportunities my university has". So I think about other Latinas or other women of color who are first-generation college students, who are just trying to survive their classes, and they don't even know what resources exist. So there are a lot of barriers to being successful in research and you may have to know someone who knows someone else to get there. Sometimes it is a little hard. So that is something as a Latina I want to focus on and show other Hispanic women, African American women, or any color that you can be successful in this field. I wanted to share my story, how I got here, and what advice I can give to whoever else. 

You might also be thinking, "Okay, you've been saying you wanna focus on the graduate school application cycle and all that. But you're still a junior. So if you want to go pursue a Ph.D., you'd have to apply around your senior year.". And that is correct. I am filming this in Jan. So my goal, at least, is to from now until September-ish, I would be talking about my involvement, the resources I used, all of the things I've done, and try to communicate that so you guys can take advantage these resources and try to get involved yourself in these opportunities. So that is the goal of this. 

But I also wanted to emphasize that there is no "one way" of doing this. There is no "secret recipe" for getting into graduate school. That doesn't even exist. I have to reiterate that. I know other women of color who decided to pursue a research career, they took a completely different path than I did, and they still got in. So there is no "one way" to do this. When I talk about these resources, the opportunities I took, or the organizations I got involved with, please don't feel obliged to partake in all of these things. That's not feasible and that's not what I'm trying to do. My goal is that you can maybe look up these resources that I'm talking about and you can maybe Google it, tell a friend about it, or just take a look for yourself on how you can get involved with 1-2 things I mentioned. I feel by doing that sets everyone up for success and helps people know about these resources. 

So yeah, these will be the main topics I talk about throughout the podcast, essentially. I wanted to dive in deep with these topics, and how we merge these topics to have these conversations.

My goal is to upload these recordings once a month. So probably I will have 15-20 minutes episodes about different topics. The reason why I am focusing on publishing once a month is that I am a junior in Biomedical Engineering. It doesn't matter what major you're in. Being a junior in college is very challenging and very demanding of your time. So this stuff is hard, but it's good. There is a reason why I will be publishing this podcast once a month. 

When I say I cite sources, like just now when I cited the statistics about women of color being in Ph.D. programs, those come from actual sources. So when I publish this podcast, I plan on having a link for a blog post. In that blog post, it will be a transcript of this episode and I will include the links that I am looking at or mentioning. So you guys and check them out and see what I am viewing, essentially. That is the gist of that. 

One little thought on this. I know you can hear me stuttering. I know you can hear me rambling on for a little bit. I realize I may be saying words repeatedly. That is all intentional. I don't plan on scripting this too much. To have these conversations, I feel I need to be a little more vulnerable and a little more raw, and I can't have this scripted or else we're not going to go anywhere. I feel to give advice, I need to feel like I am having a casual conversation with someone. So apologies for stuttering and things like that. I feel to get something good out of this, this is how I am going to do this. I feel like doing very minor edits. So that is just a quick note. 

So yeah. That is pretty much all I have. One parting message I wanted to give is this. I want to help change the culture of STEM and include more people to be involved in the STEM field. To create efficient medical therapies that represent the entire population, we have got to get a diverse group of people who are creating these therapies. So we need results that are representative of our society. To do that, we need to have groups making these things that are composed of people who are also representative of our society. That's very important to me. So hope you guys enjoy the ride. :)