I for one am someone who does not grasp every opportunity. Not necessarily the greatest thing about myself, but it’s good that I at least recognize my hesitancy, and I will explain why it is especially bad at this point in my life; recognition is the first step to improvement. For example, to really grasp what I mean by unnecessary hesitancy, the first time I went to the Rec Center was solely a scouting mission to determine if I really could use it; never mind that use of the Rec Center was clearly in my fees, but I didn’t believe it because my understanding of being a graduate student meant that we were morphs somewhere between employees and students, and I couldn’t help but doubt my allowance into the place I believed to be for students alone. That was just one example of many where I couldn’t help but doubt if I was included when I very clearly was included.

That is not what college is about. This is the one time in our lives that we should not only be taking everything we have clear invitations and rights to (especially free food), but the ones we might not. I’m not saying let’s have anarchy reign, or that we have a right to crash things that are not ours (as we can tell from my example I didn’t even want to ‘crash’ things I was invited to, so I clearly would not want to advocate for that). What I’m saying is college is the one place where there is everything that could possibly exist in the context of knowledge amalgamated into one (relatively) compact locale, and we should use that to our advantage. You see something interesting outside of your department? Contact the organizer and ask if you can join.

Just because we’re going to Texas A&M for our discipline doesn’t mean we need to stay compacted in that department. Just because we’re not devoting our career to a certain aspect of our interests doesn’t mean we can’t utilize the resources and people knowledgeable in that other topic. I can’t speak for everyone, but thus far, I have never come in contact with a professor who would shrug you off if you show genuine interest in their specialty, even if you are in a different department than theirs. I don’t think anyone would look at you funny if you showed up to a seminar not held by your department; on the contrary, people would probably think it’s really cool you were there and sharing their interest. We’re here to get specific in our interests, but why stop there? It isn’t the mandatory well-roundedness that most colleges enforce on undergrads with ‘liberal education’ credits, rather it’s a voluntary want to grow as a person, because – as much as our advisors may want us to forget it during our times here – we are people, and we are capable of being interested in topics past our own field.

Of course our careers come first, the subjects we are here for come first, and rightfully so, because we are passionate about them and we want to join the workforce in this field. But we can still have secondary interests outside of our fields, and we are in the best place possible to do that. We’re at Texas A&M for our specialties, but while we’re here, we might as well check out what else they have to offer. You didn’t just join your department, you joined Texas A&M. This is all yours.
 
– Cara Deromedi

Cara is a doctoral student in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology.