Reporting for duty!

My own cubicle!

Met with Ben Jelen today with my undergrad research partner Olivia Richards! It was an exciting day mostly because boot camp is finally accomplished. It was really difficult, but I learned a lot about my limitations and really leveled up and got a brand new perspective in what “hard at work” really is. We get our own working space with other ProHealth members putting in our 40+ hours a week. It’s just amazing working along side other smart, hard working, and enthusiastic students. I can’t express how much of a family it feels in just one week. We are ready to slay this summer!

REU ProHealth research partners Sam Whitman and Olivia Richards!

Devon, Grace, Josh M, Aislinn, Olivia, and Sam out to lunch

Ben went over yesterday the importance of an elevator speech. A 30 second talk with someone (hypothetically just meeting in an elevator) to explain who you are, what you’re doing, and why are you doing it. Trust me, it’s not as easy as it sounds. We worked on ours today and presented them to the ProHealth team (mentors, graduate mentors, student researchers, and staff) and had a little competition of who had the best one. They were all really wonderfully done, but Oliva, Devon, and Vanessa won this week’s prizes. They did rock it through and it was in fact well deserved.

My Elevator Speech:

“Hello I’m Sam Whitman, I am a senior at Arizona State University earning my bachelors in Health Sciences with a focus in Health Policy. My research interests are in technology making personalized health care more efficient. This summer, I will be working on Katie Siek and Ben Jelen’s team. We will be focusing on the ways that craft based participatory designs can tell researchers what methods could be used to implement health technology in a meaningful way to older populations.“

Patrick bringing home the donuts! (literally)

Not the best, but I’m proud of it. It’s straight and too the point and leaves my audience room to ask more questions, which is the point of the elevator speech. And we presented these at our first bi-weekly ProHealth teas where we will get together, give updates on our research and talk about things that need to covered for any reason as whole group. Still here in the office past 4 and just doing some catch up work from this intense week and will be using this first weekend to recuperate!

First Bi-Weekly ProHealth Tea