Starting Tomorrow!

My name is Kandis McNeil, and I am a Biology Major with Chemistry and Neuroscience Minors. This is my first year receiving the Kirby Internship Grant, and I am so thankful to be able to have the opportunity to work at Wake Forest Baptist Health in the Emergency Medicine Research Department. I always strive to figure out ways to unite my love of science with my compassion for people, and I have no doubt that this internship will allow me to do that. From my understanding from my interview, we will be focusing on cardiovascular research, specifically in emergency situations. One ultimate goal is to develop better ways to help patients sooner, even as soon as they are in the ambulance. This could drastically improve patient outcomes.

Some goals I have for myself for this internship are to really try to remember people’s names better when they introduce themselves to me. I have a tendency to forget easily, and I really want to work on this. I also want to get even better with my current research skills, as well as learn new ones. I am pre-med, so I want to interact with as many patients as possible and gain even better communication skills for interacting with my future patients. Lastly, I want to ensure that I leave a great impression of myself and Wake Forest University undergraduates with my hard work and compassion for the projects I am assigned to. I plan to ask every now and then how my supervisors feel like I am doing and how they feel that I can improve. This way I can track my progress throughout the internship. Again, I am very excited to begin tomorrow and cannot wait to share more next week!