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I'm heading into my fourth year as a psychology honours student, and for the past two summers, I've been working in Dr. Sheri Madigan's Determinants of Child Development Lab. My research focuses on something that feels incredibly relevant - the effects of screen time on child development and mental health. This year, my PURE summer project focused on the impact that parental device use has on their children, which may even be more than when children are on their own devices. So many things that we study in the lab, such as socioeconomic status, are difficult to change, technology use is something families can change and see the impacts for the better. 

This summer, I gained several skills conducting meta-analyses, doing data extraction, presenting at conferences, and even co-authoring a manuscript. Bi-weekly, members of our lab would gather fora journal club where one of us would pick a research article for the lab to read, meet, and discuss. It was a great way to talk about research in new ways. Even if the article wasn’t directly related to what we were doing, we could find parallels.

What's transformed me most is the mentorship I've found in the lab. Our lab has roughly twenty people, and that community has been everything. Working alongside grad students, PhD candidates, and postdocs has given me access to people who genuinely want to help me grow. Their mentorship has made me so much more confident. It's shaped my goals around becoming a psychologist and shown me that being open to opportunities and reaching out for guidance leads to growth.