What benefits of your fellowship do you most anticipate or have you enjoyed the most? I’m looking forward to uninterrupted time to focus on my research, without having to juggle TA duties and classes at the same time.

What has surprised you the most about the fellowship? Frankly, the fact that I got it – I almost fell out of my chair when I got the acceptance letter! I’d been rejected from a lot of programs I had a better statistical chance at getting, so getting chosen for the Link MS&T fellowship was a real surprise. I’d completely written the application off as something I needed to do on the off chance I got chosen, but I never expected it.

What is your vision for your future; what do you expect to be doing after your fellowship? Hopefully I’ll be a semester away from graduating, so I’ll be writing up my dissertation and job searching. I haven’t decided exactly what I want to do with my PhD yet, so I’m looking forward to figuring that out.

What advice do you give to current students considering applying to programs? Don’t stop applying; the rejection is hard to deal with, but you will never get accepted to programs without risking rejection.