The Power of Showing Up and Reaching Out

When people ask me for advice about college, this is the number one thing I tell them: you never know what will happen if you show up to an event and/or reach out to someone. I feel very grateful that my parents instilled this in me before I went off to college, because it led to every single one of the best opportunities I had during undergrad. By sharing the following stories, it is my intention that others might be inspired to muster the energy and overcome the initial awkwardness of showing up and reaching out.

Story #1: How I Got Involved in Undergraduate Research

In the spring of my freshman year of college, two of my courses were an introductory data science course and an environmental sociology course. In the environmental sociology course, there was a brief lecture on the health impacts of air pollution, which I found fascinating. In the data science course, our final project was to analyze a data set of our choice. I thought it would be cool to combine these interests, and after reading a bit online, I came up with the idea of analyzing whether proximity to highways was associated with asthma rates. I spent a while looking for data online and found some aggregated data sets, but thought there were probably much better publicly-available options that I just wasn’t finding.

So I started Googling professors at CU who might know where to get data related to air pollution from roadways. I ended up emailing a professor in environmental engineering who does a lot of work on air pollution. She forwarded me to a professor in geography with expertise in the health impacts of air pollution. This professor, Colleen Reid, invited me to meet with her to discuss my project. Our discussion ended up covering a lot more than just this project, as I learned about her research and other opportunities at CU for applying quantitative methods to study social issues. After our meeting, I sent her an email thanking her for our conversation.

Four months later, Colleen emailed me a flyer for an undergraduate data science internship (advised by her) helping to study the health impacts of air pollution from wildfires. It turned out that only two undergraduates applied: me and a student with no background in statistics or data science. Colleen became my research mentor, and I spent the next three years working with her.

Story #2: How I Started A Collaboration with the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment

About a year and a half after I started working with Colleen, she mentioned to me and her post-doc Melissa that there was going to be a day-long symposium on climate change and health in Denver the following month. We decided to go, even though it meant that I would be skipping a day of school. During one of the presentations, someone mentioned an initiative deploying low-cost air quality sensors at schools in Denver. I was curious to learn more about that initiative, so I made myself a note and started Googling when I got home. I was pretty easily able to find a description on the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment (DDPHE)’s website.

At the next week’s research group meeting, I mentioned the initiative to Colleen and wondered out loud whether analyzing data from such a program could potentially be a collaboration for our group. She said that she knew the head of the program, and asked if I would like to set up a call with them. Over the ensuing Skype call with the head of the DDPHE air quality program, it turned out that DDPHE had access to asthma medication usage records from Denver Public Schools (DPS) in addition to air pollution measurements from their low-cost sensor network, but didn’t yet have anyone analyzing the data. They were enthusiastic about us analyzing the data for them, especially when we proposed that I could apply for undergraduate research funding through the university so that they didn’t have to pay me. Thus began a collaboration through which I learned a lot about air quality sensors and statistical methods to make the low-cost sensor measurements more accurate, and Colleen and I were able to advise DDPHE and DPS on how best to correct their air pollution measurements and how to record/aggregate future data on asthma rescue medication usage to make it most useful for health studies.

Story #3: How I Developed a Leadership Role in CU Engineers Without Borders (EWB)

Every organization has unique ins and outs, but I am willing to bet that the majority of volunteer-based organizations conform to the following statement: the more time you spend in attendance at meetings and events and the more questions you ask, the faster you will become a member of the functional core (the people who know stuff and get things done). This was certainly true of my experience with EWB.

During my first semester of college, after being inspired to get involved with EWB, I showed up to a lot of meetings, including student-only ones on weeknights and meetings with a group of professional mentors every other Sunday at 8am in the CU Engineering Center lobby. Because I was in attendance, because I was attuned and asking questions and volunteering to do random tasks, I became one of the most involved first-year students and ended up being selected to join the summer travel team to Nepal. Upon my return from Nepal, I continued being present at both student-only and mentor meetings. I won’t go into all the details here, but my experiences with EWB (including getting to know people in that extensive community) were some of the most valuable of my whole college experience.

Caveat

Of course, not every interaction will yield a tangible result – the idea is that over time, one becomes better positioned to benefit from circumstance: as they say, luck favors the well-prepared!

Also, as convinced as I am of the power of showing up and reaching out, I recognize the bias of my perspective due to my background. For thoughts in this vein, see my “Reflections on Privilege in Higher Education”.