Research and Existential Crises: My Experience as a First-Gen Undergraduate Researcher

If you had told freshman-year me that I would one day publish an academic paper, I probably would have looked you sideways, nooded politely, and gone back to panicking over writing my 5 page paper.

As a first-generation college student, “research” always sounded like something really serious students did. You know, a "professional student". They somehow already knew what office hours were and what working in a "lab" meant before college. Students whose parents casually used phrases like “graduate school” at the dinner table. Students who didn’t need to Google what IS a literature review?

Meanwhile, I was just trying to figure out how to email professors without sounding like I was either:

1. begging for help, or

2. making a fool of myself

But somehow, somewhere between imposter syndrome, caffeine dependency, an

d 20 open tabs at all times, I ended up conducting undergraduate research through the McNair Scholars Program, and eventually writing a paper.

Want to know what shocked me the most about the process? I realised that nobody actually knows the answers.

Research is basically:

• reading a million articles

• being confused

• rereading them

• and slowly turning this confusion into ideas

  
  

But in all of this, my mentor doesn't always know the answers either, and they're the supposed experts in the field. This made my confused and lost moments so much easier to overcome. But this wasn't even the hardest part.

The hardest part was feeling like I belonged in these spaces. Academia has felt unfamiliar and overwhelming from the start. Every year I find myself pushing further past my limits and looking for opportunities for growth. Sometimes I fail, and find myself in spcaes where I still don't feel like I belong in.

But then mentorship programs like McNair, and supportive professors make a huge difference. Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like I was “pretending” to be a researcher and realized I actually was one.

And somehow, all the stress, imposter syndrome, and caffeine led to this published paper, which still feels surreal to say.

Research is stressful. It’s intimidating. But it’s also one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in college.