First, I have to mention that I am so thankful for being surrounded by empowering leaders throughout my entire career. Among the value things I learned from them, professionalism is the most important one.

As we talked about it in class, professionalism can vary in different fields; however, there are things I learned from non-science leaders that can still apply in my current field. For example, the importance of promoting growth (education), personal responsibility for growth, becoming a leader on my field, and maintain professional ethics.

Now the question is, am I putting into practice all the professionalism principles that I have learned from my leaders?

Well…to be honest, I am always trying to become better at this. As an official educator that I want to become once I graduate, promoting education has to be my number one principle to follow and become better at. My attempt to do this was when I got to TA previous semesters. I started as a BIOL 2108K TA and I really enjoyed this experience because I had the freedom to come up with my own way of teaching the assigned material and I was also able to share some knowledge in a fun way with my students. As of now, I keep continue sharing some knowledge with my peers in the lab and as well as helping train TAs so they can keep promoting education, just like I try to do. As for my personal growth, one big goal this semester is to finish my application to obtain my certificate of excellent in teaching & learning. As GSU mentions in their website, this certificate “provides a professional academic standard by recognizing the discipline-specific pedagogy programs”. As far as becoming a leader on my field, I believe that this depends on the qualities of the person, one not necessarily have a have a higher position to be a leader. In my case, I am just a PhD student tries to always be supportive to my team, both in my lab and TAs. Some qualities that I conserve for my every day is to always be positive, honest, confident, and inspirational to other people and I believe that is all it takes to become a leader. To maintain professional ethics, I would day this comes along with just being a great leader that you are in your field.

    This picture was taking in Chicago, Illinois last year. I assisted to my big first conference “Digestive disease week” (DDW) relevant to my field. I got to present a poster and I was beyond excited!