Tracy Bertka and Anita Kapila-Ramirez presenting their research at Student Research Day. Photo courtesy of University Communications and Marketing.
By Mary McFadden, Staff Reporter
Two psychology students, Tracy Bertka and Anita Kapila-Ramirez, placed first at California State University, Dominguez Hills’s annual Student Research Day. What is a grand honor is no easy feat, as both winners faced a few challenges along the way.
The big question we are all asking is, What exactly is Student Research Day? According to Kapila-Ramirez, “It’s a day where the research committee at Dominguez Hills gets together and can present their work. Whether it’s in poster presentation, roundtable (where they receive feedback on their research), or oral presentations, that are presented in front of judges.”
The research is determined by a principal investigator, and in Bertka and Kapila-Ramirez’s case, their project, “Morning versus Evening Exercise – What’s Better for Your Diet? Evidence From an Event Related Potential (ERP) Study,” within the Behavioral and Sciences department, was researched by Kaylie Carbine.
Carbine’s research project, which began in 2018-2019 at Brigham Young University, was given to Kapila-Ramirez and Bertka to draft the manuscript and present it. “It’s been at least a year,” Bertka said when she mentions how long she and Kapila-Ramirez have been working on the project.
The research is a long and arduous process aside from the principal investigator’s research. Students who are not familiar with the preexisting study, have to learn the background information and fundamentals of the project outside of their own studies for college classes and get an understanding into the science behind the research.
“The background of the research was the majority of what we needed to present, and when the research came it was very smooth,” Bertka said.
The additional challenge the researchers found themselves up against was only being given a time frame of six minutes for their oral presentation, which was shortened drastically as it was not enough time. Understandably, after pouring your heart into a year’s worth of work, Bertka said, “[Our research] is important, everybody needs to know about it.” Kapila-Ramirez added, laughing, “You can’t understand this, if you don’t know this.” The fundamentals of research, at its finest.
Though the two winners were approached by Carbine to present for Student Research Day, Kapila-Ramirez encourages students not to be afraid of putting themselves out there if they want to be involved.
“Join a lab, because as soon as you do, these opportunities just present themselves,” she said. “You have the support to go after these opportunities, you don’t need to be invited. This is a great opportunity to really push yourself.”
The two college seniors still felt the pressure of the student research day and the opportunity as a whole, Kapila-Ramirez said, “Even with the Imposter Syndrome, because that is something that we both talked about feeling, we didn’t think we were going to win.”
“It’s like fake it ‘til you make it. You’re putting yourself out there and you’re doing this research and it’s super brainy and nerdy, but on the inside, I don’t feel like I’m worthy,” Bertka said.
“You feel like you don’t belong. It feels like I am an imposter. ‘What am I doing here? Where did I get the audacity to do research?’ Just show up in life,” Kapila-Ramirez further emphasized.
The unlimited support both Bertka and Kapila-Ramirez received from their mentors and professors helped them thrive in their project, and regardless of the potential the two researchers might not have seen in themselves, Carbine had no doubt.
The beauty of student research day is the ability to contribute to the project with your own research, and work with mentors, or take the lead on an existing project. And for Bertka and Kapila-Ramirez, their hard work has paid off and, hopefully, will encourage other students to take the leap and branch out into a territory that is ready to be explored.
