August 29, 2013

Keira Roberts

From: San Francisco, California
Exploring: Chemistry and math

From: San Francisco, California

Exploring: Chemistry and math

Elemental discoveries: I discovered my passion for chemistry in community college. When I felt ready for a bigger challenge, I transferred to Lewis & Clark. Before applying, I met with a professor and some of her students, who were very excited about doing chemistry research in her lab. Now I’m one of those students. I’ll be spending the summer in the lab doing nanomaterials research with solar cell applications—research that has positive applications for the world, which is exactly what I want to do. It could not be more perfect.

Positive reactions: The first time I approached a teacher with a question during office hours, he ended up deriving a whole equation for me, and talking to me about it for an hour and a half. He was genuinely excited about helping me learn. It was the ideal dream I’d had about what being in college would be like.

Synthesis: I felt well prepared by my community college. Still, I definitely noticed a solid step up in the amount of work and the level of synthesis that I was expected to have with the information at Lewis & Clark. And it’s been a really positive experience. I’m seeing that I can do this. My hard work is paying off, and this dream I have of becoming a scientist is totally within my reach.