On The Path To Professorship

Name: Savanna Gee

Graduate Student, UCR Math Department

I am a graduate student in the mathematics department. I came here from a small liberal arts college where a professor’s primary job is to teach, so transitioning to a research university was shocking. The professors here have demanding and abundant research obligations, which means they can only devote a limited amount of their time to teaching. Learning has been challenging without the level of support I became used to as a student at a liberal arts college. Something I’ve gained here that I didn’t gain much of in college is friendship. I’m painfully shy, so I kept to myself as an undergraduate student. Here at UCR, the math department puts all students who are admitted at the same time in a large office to be shared for the first three years of the program. This setup makes it impossible not to socialize and become close to my peers. I am here because, with all my heart, I want to be a professor. Earning a graduate degree is a necessary step to fulfill this goal. Even though the remaining years of graduate school are going to be exhausting and quite possibly demoralizing, I look forward to overcoming the challenge. This journey will eventually end, and before I know it, I will be in a classroom teaching my very own class.

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