Hey! My name is Emily Stohler, I’m from Novato, California and I made my way over to SPU to eventually graduate with a degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology. I picked science mainly because it was the only subject that challenged me daily yet kept me captivated because it was ever-changing. However, that challenge at times was too much and I struggled with test anxiety. My professors would often notice the stark difference between my efforts on class assignment versus my test scores. I was always going above and beyond with homework to compensate for the scores I knew I would get on these tests. It wasn’t until junior year that I began taking my tests in the Center for Learning. I saw an immediate 20% increase in my scores. I was a student that compensated a lot, worked up to three jobs a quarter to build my resume to prove that I was more than a percentage on a paper. I worked as a teaching assistant for Genetics and Molecular Biology, as a Laboratory prepper and a Cell Culturist. Along with those jobs, I did research with Dr. Wall-Scheffler and Dr. Wood. It was a push all the way till graduation but networking my way up I was offered a job before I graduated to work as a Research Scientist at Harborview Medical Center. Harborview functioned as a stepping stone for me to move from infectious disease research to creating personalized cancer vaccines at Providence Cancer Research Institute in Portland Oregon.
I am here to help you throughout your time at SPU, no matter how early or late in your journey there.