Kaylyn Kim
What an honor it is to be a part of the
Dietrich Honors Fellowship Program.
This is a dream come true for me—I have been immersing myself in the different types of research here in the Psychology Department at Carnegie Mellon University, but never anything to this scale. My project is going to be a labor-intensive project, but I believe in it and I believe in the importance of the findings. Not to mention, from the very beginning of the application process, I have received great enthusiasm and support from my advisor, Dr. Brooke Feeney. I had lots of different ideas coming in, and Dr. Feeney was great at finding the core of my interests and channeling it in a positive direction.
What I’m most excited about is being completely in charge of a research project. In the past, I’ve worked on creating studies with research teams, and I realize that working very closely with a team and working by yourself are two completely different research experiences. With teams, although you get a variety of different skillsets to contribute to the research, you tend to compromise and adjust ideas to match the interests of others. I’m looking forward to working on a project that is completely based on my interests!
I’ve been thinking a lot about the ‘so what?’ aspect of the study. From my time working in the Relationships Lab as an experimenter and coder, I’ve learned that jealousy is an extremely common area of conflict in relationships. I believe the findings will determine approaches to mend the well-being of a relationship in marriage counseling and other therapeutic settings. I plan on pursuing clinical psychology in the future, so it’s really cool to be working on a study with so many real-life implications. Also, it’ll shed light into an area of research that hasn’t been too closely looked at yet.
I’m so excited for the summer to start and get my project rolling! I shall keep you updated on my progress!
Dietrich Honors Research Fellowship Blog 