I started taking different classes here at UVU, and I just fell in love with the program that I'm in. UVU is a place for growth.
My grandpa was the manager of the Spanish Fork pool. I grew up at the pool and spent a lot of time there. I even started [doing] swim team. About partway through my childhood, I developed some interesting symptoms — sometimes I couldn't quite move, like when you're working out so much that your muscles just tense up and your body just doesn't want to move anymore. It just continually got worse and worse and worse to the point where I couldn't move anymore.
Eventually, one doctor gave me the diagnosis of rheumatic fever, which essentially is saying that I got strep as a child, and it was never caught. When I was told that at a young age, I thought the doctor was telling me I was going to die. I was so scared, and I just wanted to cry. I was trying to stay brave, but my only emotion was to cry.
Doctors are great, and they are still working on helping me figure it out. Luckily, I'm able to do what I've always loved to do. I can still swim. I swam competitively throughout the rest of my childhood. Even up until high school, I was swimming competitively.
But it took a minute for me afterward to think, “I can still do this. That's not going to stop me. I'm going to keep swimming.” It didn't stop me from doing things a normal child would do. I'd sit there and be like, “I'm just going to keep pushing through this. There's nothing really holding me back except for my thoughts.”
I was thinking about going into special education. But I fell in love with geology and how the Earth works. I love the atmosphere, I love seeing how different materials work, [and] I love learning how mountains were built — it's just so fascinating to me. So, I started taking different classes here at UVU, and I just fell in love with the program that I'm in. We've gone to Capitol Reef to go and look at the different sandstone formations, and we've gone up into Little Cottonwood [to] look at the granite rock.
I had a wetland studies class with Dr. Cadet and Dr. Wang. They often talked about Utah Lake and their research with Utah Lake. I asked Dr. Wang if she would be my mentor and if I could work with her on Utah Lake. She suggested starting out with different papers that I could read through and helped me find a program that UVU and BYU were contributing to.
Dr. Wang has been a huge contributing factor to my research on Utah Lake. I worked with BYU and UVU on taking nutrient samples of [Utah Lake], and I've done some literature reviews on [the lake] as well. We've come up with some cool data and research, and we've been able to present [it] in Wisconsin through the National Council of University Research Administrators ( ), an organization that facilitates sharing research. It's fun! It's more of an adventure than sitting in a lab [to] research.
The coolest finding for me was learning how nutrients moved through the lakes and the rivers. When you're higher up in the mountains, furthest away from the lake, the nutrient levels are lower than they are when you get closer [to] the lake. That was a cool finding for me because it showed that somewhere along the way, these nutrients are getting picked up.
My plans after UVU are to get a job as a teacher. I love working with youth to see how I can help them better understand the world around them. I love to see them become interested in sciences, as well. It was challenging for me at first. But I hope that I can help kids find the excitement in figuring out how things work. I'd love to come back and get my master's in geology or meteorology.
My advice to current students would be to keep pushing forward. There are times when it might seem a little bit rough — it might be challenging to get through. Getting [a grade] lower than an A is not the end of the world. As long as you're learning and putting forth the effort [to] better understand the world around you and what field you’re going into, that's a win in my book. You should be able to take those failures and keep pushing forward because those failures make you who you are. They help you become someone better as long as you don't let that failure define you. UVU is a place for growth.
Links
National Council of University Research
Dr. Eddy Cadet
Dr. Weihong Wang
Earth Science Department
Geology Major
