ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú

Speaker 1:

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

Speaker 2:

Freshman year, I came in undecided.

Speaker 3:

I'm finance, entrepreneurship, anthropology.

Speaker 4:

I'm a senior architecture student.

Speaker 5:

I'm involved in the blockchain club here.

Speaker 6:

I'm very passionate about studying abroad.

Speaker 7:

Classes are going great.

Speaker 8:

And then obviously very involved with my sorority.

Speaker 7:

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. Eckhardt Karsten has always had a fascination for the natural world, especially after learning about the amazing world of cellular life at a young age. Later, he would also combine his interest in microbiology with ecology, and today he's also studying environmental science at ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University. Eckhardt has also interned at the Pacific Northwest National Lab, and he's an executive member of the Honors Student Advisory Board here on campus. And on this episode we also talk about how finding great mentorship can lead to life changing opportunities, and why believing in yourself is often the key to unlocking your full potential.

So today on the podcast we have somebody super cool that I cannot wait to hear more about, and the first question that I want to ask you just right off the bat is who are you?

Eckhardt Karsten:

My name's Eckhardt Karsten. I am a microbiology student. I'm also studying environmental sciences with a geology minor. Right now I'm in my junior year.

Meredith Aliff:

So, first I want to take you back to before ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú, before everything. Tell me a little bit about high school life before college. Where did you come from?

Eckhardt Karsten:

So I have always been moving around a lot of my life. I was born in Germany and my family's been bouncing around everywhere. I used to live in Mexico for a little bit. I was living in Ohio. I was living in Georgia. And I ended up sticking around here in Ohio, and throughout all of high school I was just the quiet kid, didn't talk to anybody. Always got five minutes early at every class because I would just book it down the halls. And overall I just was there for the science classes, there for the art classes, and that's about it really.

Meredith Aliff:

What got you to join those majors and minors that you have together? That's such an interesting combination.

Eckhardt Karsten:

Yeah, it is a really weird combination, because I actually started at ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú just microbiology because I knew I wanted to do something in science. I knew that I really thought cells were cool. I thought microbes were cool. I just really liked exploring life at the most basic level, and so I just started exploring around classes. I was like, okay, do I human stuff, do I like microbial stuff, where does my interest lie? And even then, it really wasn't until the end of freshman year that I was talking to my brother and my advisor, because I was on the fence of adding another co-major because it's a big decision, but they eventually talked me into it, and I was like, okay, yeah, this is what I want to do, so I'll tag along the environmental sciences because I like being outside. I like exploring the outdoors.

And then once I tagged data in, I started taking classes for that, which were a lot of geology classes. I ended up becoming really good friends with the teaching assistant for one of the labs, and she just told me, "Hey, you're pretty far into getting a geology minor. Why not just kind of tag it on?" I'm like, "Meh, sure." I mean, it's fun. A lot of the classes I do really enjoy. So that's how I ended up with this very niche mix.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, nice. And how do you like it so far? Have you been happy with your decision to mesh all those things together?

Eckhardt Karsten:

Oh, yeah. I have been elated really, honestly. It's nice because I feel like I finally found what I really, really enjoy, and that's what I like about college is unlike high school you're taking a crap ton of classes, sure, but none of them are going anywhere. They're just weird little side quests, I like to call them. But here I've chosen my direction and I've been able to shape it the way I've wanted to. And I've been able to work in a lab that I like. I've been able to get internships doing field work and stuff just because of the background I already have, and pretty soon I'll be going to Antarctica to join my professor on her field season. So I'll be able to help her with her work and get that really big experience.

Meredith Aliff:

That's Awesome. Tell me a little bit more about internships, study abroad, things like that that you've gotten to experience since you've been here.

Eckhardt Karsten:

Sure. They're terrifying, first of all. That definitely has been, well, used to be one of my biggest problems is that I really didn't think I was ready to apply to those things. Generally, I was like, "No, there's no way. I've been here for a year. I'm not ready for this. They're going to look for someone with more experience." And again, it was my advisor and my brother who talked me into just applying for these, because they're looking for people who aren't too experienced but have the motivation to want to get better. So I just applied to the first one, which was a research experience for undergraduate students, and they accepted me and I was able to go to Kentucky and do field work in the Appalachian Mountains, which was super fun. It was super pretty and I got to make loads of good friends and connections there, and then the summer after that I ended up getting an internship at a national lab, the Pacific Northwest National Lab. But overall, the internships have honestly been the highlights of my year. It's always great to spend my summer somewhere new and experience something different.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, absolutely. So how did these opportunities arise? Did you look for them yourself? Did they just present themselves to you and you jumped at them? What got you these opportunities? So what was that experience like for you?

Eckhardt Karsten:

A lot of digging. Often it just turns into diving into a rabbit hole. But, yeah, sure people are like, "Oh, apply to internships," but they don't say which ones. So definitely just looking up science internship or microbiology internship was the first step I took, and that's where I found this list of stuff. Also, talking to other upperclassmen, they told me about stuff they'd applied to and other programs and whatnot. So just talking to people is really a good way to hear about that, and just hearing about their own experiences can let you know, okay, what programs are there out there? And Google is the most powerful tool you could probably find on the internet.

Meredith Aliff:

That's true. So outside of class, you said that you're in honors. How has that experience been for you?

Eckhardt Karsten:

It's been an interesting one. Since we've come out of the pandemic, I found my strongest connections there. I've been able to make the most friends there and I most connected with the faculty in the Honors College, so really they're the people who push me to get all the experiences I have. They're the ones I can go talk to and learn something new. And so yeah, it's started to really grow on me and become a large part of my identity as well.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah. And did you say, I think I read that you were an Honors Ambassador, so what does that entail?

Eckhardt Karsten:

So, essentially I talk about what the Honors College is during Make it ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú events. So any person who's already been accepted into the Honors College, they can come to this event and they can talk to other Honors College students, that would be us, the Ambassadors, and we give them the pamphlets and all the information and marketing stuff can't give them, which is the actual, okay, what does that experience look like for us? It's one of my favorite kind of jobs to do. It's only a spring thing, but I got a chance to talk to so many people, and so many people have so much personality and you can already tell what they really, really want to do. And it's so exciting just to spark that literal spark in them.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, I mean I feel like Make it ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú is people that are eager to really get to know the campus and what it's like, and so that's super cool. And one reason that I ask about Honors Ambassador is that I actually just applied to be one. But yeah, that's super exciting. And then you do some research on campus as well, so do you want to tell me a little bit about that research?

Eckhardt Karsten:

Oh, gladly. Any person studying science, if you ask them about their research, you're just going to talk about all day. But yeah, so my research, I'm working in the Rachael Morgan-Kiss lab. We work with Antarctic psychrophiles, which essentially means we're looking at microbes that are adapted to the extreme cold. So in Antarctica there is this region called the McMurdo Dry Valley, which has these frozen lakes, which the only things living in those are microbes. So we're trying to understand how those ecosystems function, what disturbances might stress them out and what changes that might cause. So does it better get an idea of how climate change will impact the world, and specifically these communities that tend to form the baseline of almost every ecosystem?

Meredith Aliff:

Okay, interesting. And then tell me a little bit more about this trip to Antarctica that you're taking for this research, I assume.

Eckhardt Karsten:

Yeah, it is for this research. I mean, I knew my professor did these trips. She usually takes her graduate students or PhD students, but this year the team was just large enough that she was like, "Hey, do you want to just come?" And nonchalantly I just answered the email, "Oh yes, of course," but in the inside I'm like, "Yes! My plan all along!" Yeah, so my professor is part of a long term ecological research project, so it's part of the US Antarctic Program, so we go there every year to take more samples, help them collect their own data, do our own experience in the field, and come back with stuff to work on in the lab here. So what that looks like for me is that I essentially have a research project that I'm now going to be working on from now up until I graduate, and I'm just going to be helping out however I can in the field. We'll be there for 10 weeks. We'll be camping for four of those weeks by the lakes, so that'll be an experience.

Meredith Aliff:

How neat.

Eckhardt Karsten:

Yeah, no. I love camping. This is as crazy camping as I'm going to be able to get.

Meredith Aliff:

So you talked about getting advice, did you say from a graduate assistant about adding on your minor?

Eckhardt Karsten:

Yeah, she was the graduate assistant for the lab for one of my geology classes.

Meredith Aliff:

Okay, awesome. And then also the research with this other faculty member. So the staff has had a bigger impact on your experience. What has their involvement been like? Where do you think you would be if you maybe didn't have some of these connections that you had with them?

Eckhardt Karsten:

I don't think I'd be here if I didn't have the connections, honestly. The faculty here have been a monumental part of my experience and where I am today. Honestly, and this is something that I never would've believed, and I would have to really tell younger me, is that if you just talk about your interests, talk about what you want to get out of an experience or what you want to get out of your time here, people will generally start to hear that and start to help you build that experience, especially because as faculty at the university, as a professor, as an advisor, it's their job to help build this once in a lifetime experience you have. So they've definitely been able to guide me to so many experiences, and they've honestly made these experiences seem possible.

Meredith Aliff:

That's awesome. And then is there anybody in particular that you want to give a little shout out today, any faculty that has really helped you on your journey through college so far?

Eckhardt Karsten:

Oh, that's a long list. So I think definitely a big one would have to be Dr. Kiss for inviting me to join her in Antarctica. Honestly, I still can't believe it's happening and I'm really looking forward to it, and I really hope I don't disappoint. But also Teresa Bomba, she was my honors advisor before we switched advisors around, and she honestly helped spur my chain of experiences that led up to this point. Yeah, those are the two major ones, honestly.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, that's awesome. So what is your goal? Where do you see yourself? Even just in the next year, what do you hope to get out of these Antarctic experiences, what do you hope to get out of maybe your senior year of college? Let's just start there. What do you want to do with the rest of your college experience?

Eckhardt Karsten:

First, my college experience, I mean obviously I want to graduate with honors, and I want to be able to come out of it with an honors with distinction project, which essentially means just honors plus. Because I'm working on trying to publish a paper, so I also want to get that done by the end of it. After college, I know I want every day of my career after that just be an adventure. I want to be able to explore the frontiers, whatever the newest frontier is. And that tends to be microbiology, so that's why I pursued that. The fact that we have access to better technology for genomics to be able to better understand the DNA and inner workings of cells has meant that we're able to explore smaller and smaller and smaller. And since we're able to get more portable tools out there, we're able to go into more remote areas of the world and start to see what's there.

30 years ago being able to explore the microbes in Antarctica would not have been possible. 30 years ago wouldn't have been possible to go to the deepest trenches and extract DNA from there, figure out what's living there. All these other fields have been making better and better technology means that we can explore further. So that's why it's the new frontiers, because we barely know how our cells work. So it's the biggest mystery.

Meredith Aliff:

We finally have maybe more means to answer some of those questions, though.

Eckhardt Karsten:

Right. We do have more means to answer it and more tools, and I want to be the person to answer those.

Meredith Aliff:

That's awesome. That's an awesome answer.

Eckhardt Karsten:

And I do want to go back to Mexico to where my family is. I want to go to the Yucatan Peninsula, as that place has a very, very unique hydrogeology as well as a very just weird microbial world, because you're talking about a place that... The entirety of the Yucatan Peninsula is filled with subterranean rivers and hidden cave systems that are all very fresh water systems that have been untouched for thousands if not millions of years, so trying to see if there's anything living down there, how those communities work, and trying to understand how the mangroves that are fed by these water systems operate. I want to know how all that works and also just bring community science there.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. And then you talked a little bit about this earlier, but if you could go back and talk to yourself somewhere before your freshman year, you're getting ready to come here, is there anything that you would tell yourself at that point?

Eckhardt Karsten:

I think the biggest thing that I would say to myself, and I think I would just say to anybody is that you're a lot more capable than you think you are. You're a lot smarter, a lot better, and so much more qualified than you give yourself credit for. Because that's definitely something that I struggled with in high school, and I know I still kind of struggle with now is a lot of self doubt. Really not believing that I'm capable or that I'm ready for things. And I think definitely looking back I would've made so many more things in my high school experience a lot better if I would've just reached out and actually tried it instead of just sitting in the back and being, "No, I'll just wait it out."

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah, no, I love that. That's great advice. So I feel like we've covered a lot. If you had to choose one thing in college that you would say, "This is absolutely my favorite thing that I've decided to do, the best decision I've made," what would you say that is? I know that's a really tough question.

Eckhardt Karsten:

How dare you make me reflect on my life?

Meredith Aliff:

I'm sorry. I just have to know.

Eckhardt Karsten:

I think the best decision I ever made was finally putting myself out there, and finally sending one email to ask for a letter of recommendation. Because after I did that, everything else started falling into place. That same professor was the one who invited me to join her lab, and who was now inviting me to join an Antarctica. That recommendation letter got me into the summer internship, and got me into the next one, and now I've already gotten this huge wealth of experience both academically and for my career, but also just all the friends and memories I've made. So yeah, just that one email I sent was honestly the best thing I ever done.

Meredith Aliff:

That's awesome. That's a really great answer actually. And then I guess my final question for you is if you had anything else that you would want to say to somebody that might be listening to this conversation right now, what would you like to assure them about for college, or maybe give them insight on?

Eckhardt Karsten:

No matter what other people tell you to apply for or what career you should go into, and that can be your parents, friends, older people, it's your life. If you want to study theater and have a minor in metals, and that's exactly what you want to do in life, you go for that. If you want to be studying microbiology, environmental science, if you want to become a geochemist, you need to pursue that, because it's what you want after all, and you want to be happy at the end of it. And then college is a really good time to figure that out and finally grow into the person you want to be.

Meredith Aliff:

That's awesome. I love it. Well I think that you have it figured out. You have a super inspiring path and story that was so much fun to hear more about, and I really appreciate you coming on today.

Eckhardt Karsten:

Yeah, no problem. It's always fun to talk.

Meredith Aliff:

Thank you so much.

Eckhart Carson is pursuing a degree in microbiology with a focus in environmental science at ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University. After graduation, he plans to earn a master's in marine sciences in oceanography before conducting professional field work. 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.