The second full week of HYRS has come to a close, and to be honest, it’s been pretty eventful. Let’s rewind to last Friday morning—that’s where we left off.
The day kicked off with an Applied AI in Oral Health workshop. My two friends, who are working on similar projects with me, and I were invited by our hosts—so we didn’t even have to pay to get in. And we got free Persian food—I still miss the tomatoes and saffron chicken. Okay, in all seriousness, the workshop was genuinely intriguing. We covered a range of topics, from how Natural Language Processing works to challenges with electronic health record data. But, like last week, we couldn’t help feeling a little intimidated—three high school students in a room where the total doctorate degree count was probably over 25.
After lunch, we had our PD session, where we got to network with five professors and researchers from the university. Let me tell you: this was probably the highlight of the week so far. Dr. Frederick West gave us his highlight-packed keynote address about his career; it’s crazy he got to work with Gilbert Stork. Dr. Ravina Sanghera gave me insight into the importance of considering cultural factors as a dermatologist—some symptoms and treatments can work differently on different skin tones. I learned from Dr. Nanc Price how to get involved in research as an undergrad, plain and simple: reach out to as many professors as you can (they’ll be flattered), introduce yourself, learn about their field, and volunteer—even if it means washing test tubes. Dr. Eniola Salami shared her journey to medical school: don’t take everything too seriously and pursue things because you enjoy them. And last but not least, Dr. Gane Wong—the man with 50,000 Google Scholar citations—himself. As a physics PhD who ended up in microbiology working on the Human Genome Project, he reminded us to follow and deeply understand our interests—because, like his story shows, you never know where they might lead.
Oh, and I realized I’d completely forgotten about the networking part… so I made sure to connect with a few of them on LinkedIn after (yes, these connections will definitely come in handy—and let’s be honest, they’re a bit of a flex too).
The day ended with a tour in the exercise physiology lab. I surprised myself with the grip strength test (all the gym time was worth it). But when we tested the leg press, I realized I’d skipped leg day too many times. That wrapped up the day. I’d also like to mention that Friday was when I realized just how unorganized and outdated my LinkedIn was. That evening, I spent a solid four hours revamping the whole thing… and that’s when my LinkedIn addiction officially began.
Fast forward to Monday morning. We were headed to Red Deer Polytechnic for our Health Innovation Day. And the only thing I had on my mind was making those LinkedIn connections.
When we arrived, we were given some time to meet post-secondary students from across Alberta (here we were again… just high school kids). We were greeted by keynote speaker Patty Wickson. Before we knew it, it was lunch. It was okay, though the soup definitely pulled more than its weight.
After that came one of the most useful and applicable talks so far: a LinkedIn workshop. I have to say, I was relieved all those hours I spent revamping mine paid off. Employment professional Sydney Ducharme gave us three catchy strategies to make the most of LinkedIn: Skip the Queue, Trojan Horse, and Career Tourism. I won’t go in-depth, but you get the gist: she was incredibly engaging. Also, did I mention I somehow won a $100 backpack? The day wrapped up with a panel of healthcare professionals sharing career advice, and before we knew it, we were back in Edmonton. And yes, I got some of their LinkedIns.
The rest of the week flew by. Each day was spent either debating whether I should spend $7 on Starbucks or reading research articles about AI-driven knowledge graph pipelines. Some of these papers were filled to the brim with jargon. Like, what is BERT? Sounds like a cartoon character. A confusion matrix? The name really fit how I felt about the topic. Linear algebra and vectors? I thought that was a character from Despicable Me. /s
There’s no clear “moral of the story” this week, but I do have two key pieces of advice. Firstly, get LinkedIn. It’s where you can both network and flex without seeming pretentious. Secondly, learn your math. Being a Kumon survivor, my math skills are fairly solid, which made a lot of these AI concepts easier to grasp. Unless of course (yes, this is a reused joke), you’re a business major.
Alexander (Alex) D., a student from Sherwood Park, is an avid sports fan and competitive badminton player—which takes up most of his time. He also enjoys playing piano and watching movies or TV, and channels his love for quantitative subjects, like math, into analyzing fantasy NBA leagues to win.