Earlier this semester, I chatted with Anjali about her career since graduating from Yale-NUS College as an environmental sciences major. Anjali studied abroad at Wellesley in 2023! Below are some highlights of our conversation. 

Career Path and Interest in Research

While at Yale-NUS and Wellesley, Anjali was actually not particularly interested in research. In fact, she chose to not complete a thesis or capstone project during her senior year because she did not have a deep interest in any specific project. However, as she explored different career options and tried to envision herself in a variety of fields, research stuck out in her head. The field was appealing to her because it was accessible and would allow her to work without straying too far from her interest in continuous learning. 

Anjali graduated from Yale-NUS in 2024 and began working at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) as a Research Assistant that fall. She continues to work at NTU on the Climate Transformation Programme (CTP) project today. Her career at NTU actually began by chance. During her senior year, she applied for a job in a completely different field but her interviewer suggested she look into the CTU project given her background. This resulted in Anjali joining a Communications professor’s project, despite her being an environmental sciences major. While the field is quite different than she initially anticipated, Anjali enjoys the work she does each day. 

Daily Work

As a Research Assistant, Anjali has the flexibility to set her own schedule and timeline. She is not constrained to the typical 9-5 schedule that many people work under. Instead, she is assigned a series of larger tasks that she must accomplish by specific dates and can choose how to allocate her time to meet those deadlines accordingly. She enjoys not being tied to a daily checklist and having the freedom to choose which days she works. Additionally, the option to work from home allows her to balance her professional responsibilities with her personal life more easily. 

Favorite and Least Favorite Parts of the Job

Anjali loves the collaborative aspect of research. The emphasis on collaboration allows her to learn every day from both her peers and mentors. The constant discussion has helped her grow as a researcher and team member. She also receives a lot of constructive feedback from her team, which has been invaluable in building her skills and confidence at her first job. 

On the other hand, Anjali’s least favorite aspects are the administrative work and the constant pressure to produce products. Like most jobs, paperwork can pile up and become tedious, taking time away from more engaging tasks. Moreover, Anjali also faces pressure from her professor and team to deliver papers and tangible outcomes. She has found that too much pressure on output can detract from the joy of doing research for the sake of exploring new ideas and learning. 

Important Skills for Research

There are several skills that Anjali has found useful in the research field. First, strong reading and writing skills are essential. Anjali is frequently asked to complete literature reviews, read reports, and conduct field analyses under tight deadlines. The ability to quickly absorb information and produce clear analyses is crucial in completing day-to-day tasks. 

In addition to reading speed, Anjali emphasized the importance of being able to interpret academic papers efficiently. Often, research assistants are asked to read papers from sub-fields that they are not closely familiar with. Being able to read the papers and grasp complex concepts quickly is essential. This is difficult to train for, but she believes that liberal arts colleges prepare students well for this skill. 

Data analysis skills are also valuable in the research field. Anjali’s work mainly involves R, but other professors require their research assistants to use other platforms. Anjali thinks that having strong skills in at least one programming software is the key for research. Because coding relies on similar thought processes and strategies across platforms, proficiency in any one language can make it easier to learn others. In her research role, Anjali mainly uses R to break down data sets and extract specific details, making data analysis a crucial part of her work.