Who am I?

Hello! My name is Andrea Peterson. I grew up in the small town of Black River Falls, WI. I chose the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire because the campus is beautiful and it is the perfect size school for me! I am majoring in psychology, with a minor in Spanish. I intend on going to graduate school for School Psychology. I first heard about the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program from a leader of the Student Support Services once they found out that I wanted to go to graduate school. They suggested I apply, and after learning more about the program I decided to do it. After the application went through, I had to have a meeting with Dr. Kelly Wonder, the Director of the McNair program. She told me all of the details about McNair; how I will have to take a class every semester, and eventually do my own research project. Once I accepted the offer to join McNair I joined the course and started thinking about my research and what I wanted to do. I hope to incorporate mental health in my research through McNair, specifically depression and anxiety. I am interested in this topic because so many people in my life are affected by mental health issues. I am curious to discover what factors go into one's mental health development. To take this curiosity one step further, I want to investigate if and how being a victim of abuse as a child or having a parent who is a substance abuser would affect someone's mental health when they are an adult. I am still trying to narrow down my topic into something more specific, something that can offer more in depth and niche information on the topic of mental health. My goal is to collect data that has not been collected in studies outside of my own. I would like to create a pool of new knowledge on mental health in relation to adverse childhood experiences from my research. On this blog I will be sharing my personal journey with my McNair research and my journey applying for, picking, and getting into the right graduate school. I hope you all can follow me on this amazing journey!