Many of our students attended this year’s meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA), held in San Diego, November 10 – 14. What follows is a post from one of these attendees.
By Madeleine Kim, BS
This year I had the incredible opportunity to travel to San Diego, CA and attend the 2018 APHA Conference. In the weeks leading up to the conference I was becoming more and more excited as I scrolled through the APHA app on my phone and chose which presentations I wanted to attend and saw what poster sessions were being held. More than anything I was excited to meet people that have similar interests as me and to learn about the different types of work that people are doing.
My first event in San Diego was a Maternal and Child Health (MCH) meet-up where MCH students and professionals from different areas of the country could network. When the first person who came up to talk with me asked me a question, I couldn’t remember what I had learned about networking. I had to remind myself of the goals I had set for myself regarding the people I wanted to meet and the information that I wanted to gather.
Nearing the end of the conference I was worried that I hadn’t met the “right person” yet. In my head, the “right person” was someone who had the same interests as me, was working in a position that I wanted, and could offer me clear advice about how to navigate school and the workforce. (I know, I had high expectations).
At the end of the conference I realized the most important lesson is that every connection we make is valuable. While it is important to be goal-directed and have intentional conversations, there is so much to be gained and learned by talking with people from different fields with different interests than me. Much of the information and advice that I wanted to find in my “right person” could be explained through many different people and would allow me to have different perspectives. In addition, collaboration in public health and interdisciplinary methods is so important and we can’t achieve that by only talking with people who work in the same field as us. While maybe I didn’t find the “right person” that had the same explicit interests as me, I value the connections I made and hope to keep them close in the future.
Maddie Kim is a second-semester MPH student concentrating in Maternal and Child Health. She plans to graduate in December 2019. She graduated in 2018 from Tulane University with a bachelor degree in Public Health. Her interests include adverse childhood experiences, infant and early childhood mental health, and health systems policy. She also enjoys baking, the ocean, and snuggling with her cat.
