Julie Guerin

Class of 2012, B.A. in Psychology

Where have you worked and/or studied since you graduated from USC?

I attended University College London for the academic year following graduation from USC where I earned an MSc in Clinical Neuroscience. For my MSc dissertation, I used fMRI to investigate age difference in language processing between younger and older healthy adults. This project was part of the greater “Predicting Language Outcome and Recovery After Stroke (PLORAS” research project which aims to better understand aphasia. I am currently working at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging as a Research Assistant to my MSc supervisor, with the aims to continue my MSc project and eventually publish our work. I also contribute to the PLORAS team with patient recruitment and MRI scanning.

What was the most beneficial thing you did as a student at USC to prepare you for post-graduation?

The most beneficial thing I did as a student was learning how to think about applying the knowledge I was learning to the bigger picture of my field of interest.  I think it’s common for undergraduates to focus so much on knowing facts and memorising concepts without keeping in mind what those facts and concepts mean in the greater picture of the field.

What course did you enjoy the most?

The courses I enjoyed the most were Principles of Neural Development because it was the single most challenging and thought-provking course that I took at USC. It changed the way I thought about and appreciated neuroscience. It didn’t have many students in the class when I took it which made it a very discussion-based course, which I loved. We had weekly journal club-like discussion sections which really made it feel like a postgraduate course.

If you were an undergraduate again, is there anything that you would do differently?

I would network a lot more with current USC PhD students and Professors to get a better insight into graduate school reality and into post-graduate options. I would review all my lecture notes in the evenings on the same day not to re-learn all the concepts I learned but to grasp the 1-5 major points/gists of the lectures. I’d take advantage of gaining as much experience as possible in programs or opportunities that matched my future prospects – for example, in my case I knew I wanted to eventually earn a PhD, so I volunteered to participate in several research projects. For someone interested in education, it would be beneficial to seek out tutoring opportunities and teaching assistant options.