The views and opinions expressed in this podcast by the hosts and guests may or may not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Miami University.

Speaker 1:

Freshman year, I came in undecided.

Speaker 2:

I'm finance, entrepreneurship, anthropology.

Speaker 3:

I'm a senior architecture student.

Speaker 4:

I'm involved in the blockchain club here.

Speaker 5:

I'm very passionate about studying abroad.

Speaker 6:

Classes are going great.

Speaker 7:

And then obviously very involved with my sorority.

Speaker 6:

I'm thriving.

Meredith Aliff:

Hi, I'm Meredith Aliff and this is Major Insight. This is the podcast where we taught college life with amazing students about how to find your place and purpose on campus. When Laura Schonken first decided to help plant flowers for a high school club, she never imagined how that one experience would change her life forever. Laura has nurtured a passion for plants ever since, and today she hopes to make a positive impact on the world through botany and science. But plants aren't her only focus. Laura is also interested in fashion, so we'll talk about her unique combination of majors and about the value of research lab experience, ways to avoid burnout, and about learning how to take your time in college by letting things grow and unfold in their own natural way.

So today on the podcast, we have somebody super cool that I'm really excited to talk to. And I'm going to start with the question that I always ask everybody at the beginning. And that is, who are you?

Laura Schonken:

Well, my name's Laura Schonken and I'm currently a junior and my majors are botany and I have a co-major in fashion on the design track.

Meredith Aliff:

That is so cool. So before we get too much in your majors, I really want to hear about that combination, how you got there. But let's take it even back to what brought you here to Miami. Where are you from? How was that college process for you?

Laura Schonken:

Yeah, so I'm from Illinois in Glenview and kind of what brought me to Miami was my majors are both very specific and kind of hard to find, especially the botany. And so Miami was a school that had the botany and then additionally had the fashion. So I was like, I think this is a good choice for me.

Meredith Aliff:

Well, that's awesome. So let's talk about the major a little bit. Did you immediately come in with both of those or was it kind of a progressive thing that you decided to tack on one after?

Laura Schonken:

I came in knowing I wanted to do botany and fashion, but I had to add the fashion on afterwards because it's a program you have to apply into. And so I came in with botany and then I added sustainability in between there and then added fashion lastly. But then I was having issues with scheduling and stuff and I realized it was just too many things, too much going on, so I decide to parse it back down to just botany and fashion.

Meredith Aliff:

What was the basis of those two decisions? What kind of led up to you deciding, hey, this is what I want to study in college?

Laura Schonken:

So botany, I've always just had an interest in plants and stuff. And in high school I did horticulture classes and horticulture team, and I just kind of was researching what kind of jobs I could do in that field and horticulture's a little bit more practical where you're growing plants and I wanted to see more of a scientific side and study a more scientific side. So that's how I found botany. And so I just was looking for schools that had that. And then fashion, I've always liked crafting and making things. And one time I got a sewing machine from a garage sale and I've just been sewing ever since. And I took some classes in high school and I was like, I really want to do classes in college. And I never expected to be interested in it as a career. I always told people, oh, I do botany and fashion's just a hobby. I just want to take classes to get better. But since then I've gotten a lot bigger interest in fashion.

Meredith Aliff:

That's awesome. So tell me a little bit about the curriculum of a fashion design major. I feel like it's seems very different from my majors or maybe a standard English major. What are those courses kind of like for you?

Laura Schonken:

Yeah, we have a whole diversity of courses. We take some really class courses where you have normal lectures and you have tests. For example, I'm taking contemporary fashion history right now. And so it's exactly just kind of a history class, but about fashion. And then we also have more hands on classes. I'm currently taking a draping class where we come in and we're physically draping the patterns that we're making. And so there's not really tests and stuff. So it's kind of cool having both of those because doing just one might get boring or too stressful. So it's nice to have the diversity.

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely, yeah, it kind of gets that creative side out of you as well as the left brain more.

Laura Schonken:

Yeah. Yes.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, that's super cool. Are there any organizations on campus that kind of support your majors that you're involved in? Or are your organizations kind of completely different than your major?

Laura Schonken:

Yeah, there's like a Miami University Botanical Society, which I really liked because we have fun meetings and then they also do honeysuckle removal, which is something I care a lot about. So I find that really fun. And then for fashion, there's MUFND, which stands for Miami University Fashion and Design. And I'm not in that club, but I am designing for the fashion show this year. So they have a fashion show each year where students can either design or model or help behind the scenes.

Meredith Aliff:

That's amazing. Well, congratulations that you got asked to do that. And so back to the classes just for a second, botany or fashion design, are there any teachers or classes that really stuck out to you during your time here so far? Any that you're super excited to take?

Laura Schonken:

Yeah, it's kind of hard because I really like all of my professors so I feel bad just naming some of them. But I really appreciate all of them. In terms of classes, specifically on the botany side, I've had some really great teachers that have helped me get more involved. For example, my professor, Jonathan Bauer, he taught... I think it was ecology, but after that class I got in contact with him and now I work in his lab. So it's super cool.

Meredith Aliff:

That's awesome. So tell me a little bit more outside of class. I heard we were talking a little bit before. You're in the honors program. What has that experience meant to you since you've been here at school?

Laura Schonken:

I've really enjoyed it. I really like being in the honors college. There's some really nice benefits. You get to sign up for classes early, which is just really useful. Especially with the very specific majors, they only offer one section of a course for example, so I need to make sure I can get into it. And I like doing the honors experiences because they're usually things that I'm already doing. And then I get to just write a reflection about it and really have some thoughts about what I did and what it meant to me. So I find that really cool.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah. I do want to get a little bit into your research that you've done on campus, so I'm really interested to kind of hear about that.

Laura Schonken:

So I work in Jonathan's lab and basically I have a graduate mentor whose name is Emily Galloway. And she's just the most amazing... She's just a great mentor and I come into lab and I'll work with her and I'm actually working on a project right now that I started over the summer. It was an undergraduate summer scholars project, but our plants are still growing so we're still working on it. And we basically had two field sites and a greenhouse experiment where we planted [inaudible 00:07:22] and we put bacteria on the roots of it and it's like a symbion.

And so we're trying to see just the differences in the strain of the bacteria or the different sites and stuff. So it's a really cool project. I'm learning just a lot about how to run a project and different ways to do things in a lab and there's a lot of different stages of the project, like planning and then actually conducting it. Sometimes we're out in the field, out in the prairie measuring our plants and other times we're pouring petri dishes and plating bacteria and stuff. So it's really cool and I'm really grateful to be doing the research and I'm very excited about all the people I work with in my lab. They're all great.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, so it's just what it sounds like is a really great way to get some hands on experience when it comes to your major.

Laura Schonken:

Yes.

Meredith Aliff:

Do you get that hands on experience otherwise or would you recommend reaching out to research and things like that on campus to get that hands on experience?

Laura Schonken:

Yeah, I highly recommend to other students to just reach out. Oftentimes it just takes your own initiative to make it happen. But I think doing research in a lab while you're in college is super valuable experience and it also not only teaches you about research but also can help guide you in terms of your career path. Because that might be a place you might be doing that kind of research afterwards, so you might find out that you don't like it and that's a good way to find that out rather than afterwards. Or for example, in my lab we've had students who are undergrads and have been applying for grad school. And so I've learned a lot about that process and how it works through their experiences. So it's really nice to have some graduate mentors and other people who are going and have similar career goals as I do.

Meredith Aliff:

Those peer perspectives, getting to bounce ideas off. That's awesome. How do you go about making those faculty connections on campus?

Laura Schonken:

Yeah, for me was Dr. Bauer had talked in class about how students could get involved with research and so I just sent him an email and that's how I got connected and I started coming in and helping out with other people's projects and then I was asked to come work in the fall.

Meredith Aliff:

And it sounds like moral the story, pay attention in class. The teacher is probably going to say some pretty valuable stuff in there. So you've had all this stuff, you're on the second half of your college experience finishing up undergrad. What are your plans, all these things that you've done throughout, what is your goal with those after college?

Laura Schonken:

Yeah, so as I said before, I wasn't sure I was interested in doing anything with fashion, just kind of more for fun. But as I've been taking my fashion classes, I've really fell in love and I've figured out some different pathways I could take. So I'm hoping to somehow combine... Not combine it with botany but keep it a part of my life. So I definitely want to go to grad school for botany and then maybe do it for fashion as well. We'll see. I currently work in the costume shop at Miami, so that's providing me a lot of cool experience and I'm seeing that maybe I could follow that kind of pathway. I'm really interested in costume design and stuff like that, so I'm interested in maybe seeing if I could manage to do both.

Meredith Aliff:

Definitely. Tell me a little bit about the costume shop. What is that for?

Laura Schonken:

I had taken a class with Dr. Lisa Martin-Stuart my freshman year, and she had talked about how she's worked in the film industry and has done costume productions and I thought that was just the coolest thing ever. But I didn't end up emailing her as I would've recommended to myself because it was during COVID year and so I was at home so I should have emailed her my sophomore year, but I was just like... It was my first time on campus. I was still getting-

Meredith Aliff:

It was every new.

Laura Schonken:

Yeah. And I had just gotten involved in Dr. Bauer's lab, so I was probably wouldn't have been able to handle all of that at once. But this semester I just started working in the costume shop. I reached out and emailed her and she gave me a tour. And so now I work there four times a week and I come in and just sew or help with whatever else they need me to do. And it's just a really great place. My advisor in the costume shop, Meggan Peters, she's really great. She's so nice and she will help me with my projects or instruct me with what to do. And just from her and Dr. Martin-Stuart, I'm learning a lot about the costume industry and how I could get involved with it.

Meredith Aliff:

That's so cool. So a little bit earlier you talked about how you had botany, sustainability, and fashion and how you kind of had to make that decision that maybe it was just too much on your plate. What advice would you give to somebody that's thinking, I already took this on. Should I give up or drop this major? How do you go about that in your head and make it okay I guess?

Laura Schonken:

Yeah, I think it can definitely be a hard decision for me. I'm always somebody that wants to just add more. I'm like, "Oh, I can do it, I can handle it." And I probably could have handled it, but I figured I really want to enjoy my time in college. And also, there's more than just classes as I'm doing these other jobs and work experiences that I find really useful and I'm just not having time to have a third major. So just kind of budgeting my time and now I'm realizing that I have a lot more time to do the things that I want to do and really focus in my classes. So I'm sad that I can't have a sustainability co-major as well, but I don't miss it. And I think it was the right decision.

Meredith Aliff:

Good. Yeah, I think that it definitely was too because then you won't be stretched so thin and there is a point in college, I think people kind of experience burnout for the first time just loading too much on, especially with the honors students I've noticed. All the honors students, it's like, yeah, I actually do eight things other than class. But no, I mean I'm glad that you made the decision. It seems to have been the best one for you. So you can thrive in those other two areas.

Laura Schonken:

Definitely. Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

And then how would you best navigate or best advise someone who might be interested in doing all these other organizations as well? Were you the type that got to campus and just jumped into everything, school orgs, everything all at once or was there a little bit of a fade in adding a couple orgs here and there and then kind of accumulating everything? What's your take on maybe the best way to go about that?

Laura Schonken:

I started off with doing everything. I had just way too many credit hours and I was in 13 clubs last year. And then once I figured out which ones I liked and didn't, kind of parsed it down, and I'm still probably in too many clubs this year, but I really enjoy them. So I don't think it's too much of a problem, but I feel like it's different for everyone. But I definitely liked just... We have so many clubs on campus, I feel like you have to try them all.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, absolutely. And how did you go about finding all of these clubs?

Laura Schonken:

Most of them were through mega fair, just walking around that and getting pamphlets and then seeing which ones I was actually interested in. And I think some of them I just kind of heard about through friends or through other things.

Meredith Aliff:

Thinking back to yourself, coming in freshman year, maybe not having any idea what's about to happen, what advice... Now that you're where you are now, what advice would you give yourself or any freshman coming in that might be interested in what you're interested in studying?

Laura Schonken:

I'd say just go for it and if it doesn't work out, you'll be able to figure it out probably. Things tend to just kind of figure themselves out and sometimes you'll make some kind of mistake and you'll have to deal with that, but in the end it'll work out, I believe.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you've got it all figured out at this point. Don't put too much on your plate, it's going to all work out in the end. I definitely have noticed that as well. Everything just kind of seems to fall into place.

Laura Schonken:

I agree.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah. So it sounds like you have a super cool college experience so far. I hope that the next little bit is just as exciting and fun and I wish you the best of luck and thank you so, so much for coming to talk to us today.

Laura Schonken:

Well, thanks for having me.

Meredith Aliff:

Laura Schonken is a botany and fashion design double major at Miami University. After graduation, she aspires to do lab work at the Chicago Botanic Gardens while continuing to explore fashion. And thank you for listening to Major Insight. If you enjoyed this podcast, share it with your friends or anyone interested in navigating college life. Many more episodes are now available wherever podcasts are found.