Hi, I’m Ilana Simkol a senior majoring in
Community Health. I wanted to work on the FaBULIS Nutrition Summer Team Project
since I have always been interested in nutrition. My interest with nutrition
first started when I began competitive gymnastics. As a gymnast, I had to be
aware of what kinds of foods I ate. Also, this nutrition summer team project
focused on consumer behavior and actual dietary intake that a person could
consume. I realized that this research topic could relate to the time I worked
at a restaurant since I remember being intrigued by what each customer’s
definition of “healthy” was. I also wanted to work on this summer team project
because I was interested in doing research after taking my research methods
class in an earlier semester.
Long-term, I want to do something in the public
health field and research has been an interest of mine. I can use this summer
team project research as a starter and stepping stone as I get more involved in
research. The research methods class I took was an eye-opener to the research
process and this summer team project got me more interested in research.
During the weeks, my partner and I first started
conducting a literature review where we would look at different articles to
find gaps and to make sure our research question was not already answered or
looked at too many times, this would lead us to work on our Annotated
Bibliography. We then, would narrow our research question down and begin to
look at the NHANES data and begin the coding process. As we would code, we
would begin to write the research paper.
We would also meet with our mentor to discuss our progress so far and
ask any questions that we had.
One thing that I learned about this summer is
how patient you need to be with research. Research takes time and dedication, a
process, which cannot be rushed and needs your complete concentration since
there is a lot that needs to be done.
