Women In STEM Series – Meet Lizzy Gueck
Meet Lizzy Gueck! Lizzy is a junior majoring in Psychology and minoring in Kinesiology who is also on the track and field team for CCU! Growing up, she loved English, but she was always good at science.Her dad inspired her to pursue her career because he went to pharmacy school and is passionate about the health field which was cool for Lizzy to grow up around. However, she was not entirely sold on chemistry and medicine.
She was sold on being able to help people, understand the chemistry of our brain, and why we behave in a certain way.
To Lizzy, being a Woman in STEM, is someone who is willing to make time management sacrifices and the ability to remind themselves that the extra knowledge that is gained is beneficial although in some moment it does not seem very fun. It is also a feeling of accomplishment because this was not happening 30 years ago.
Her favorite thing about STEM is how applicable STEM is to humans specifically. She loves how the things that she is learning is happening in her own body. The emotional things she is learning in psychology is happening to those around her, so she is able to connect to them better. Also, the anatomical things that she is learning is applicable for everything especially to her sport like knowing about heart rate, muscle strength, and other things that leads to a better health are so cool and beneficial.
Her favorite class at CCU challenge wise is her Human Anatomy and Physiology classes. Her favorite class at CCU class material-wise has been her Shame and Grace class just to see the science of how we process really heavy things in our brain and what is actually involved in it like neurotransmitters or things that people do not really think about when we are going through really hard situations. She wants all of us to know that our physical brain is trying to process these hard situations that we find ourselves in.
She is able to back up her psychological knowledge with her anatomical knowledge is so amazing for Lizzy.
She has always had her psychology major, but she has changed her minor a couple of times, her kinesiology minor will be the fifth minor that she has chosen, but she does plan on keeping this minor. Lizzy was interested in sports psychology clinically, but now she is interested in general clinical psychology and doing some coaching or strength training. This kind of science is useful because it is applicable, and she loves biology, general health, and pre-med. Kinesiology is really special to her because exercise and running have been a huge part of her schedule and something she is willing to have a huge time commitment for even among a heavy STEM class workload. To have some of her STEM classes apply to her exercise science and what she is doing on the track has been really cool for her.
Relational sacrifices have been some challenges that Lizzy has had to overcome because she has a lot of friendships on campus that she is grateful for. However, it is really hard for her to pick and chose who she will spend time with since she does not have lots of time over the weekend. Even spending time with her roommates has been a challenge since they are all STEM majors, so they all understand that it is hard to find time to spend time with each other.
Some encouragement Lizzy would give to those going into STEM, make sure you are passionate about it.
Make sure it is something you will be able to do for the next 40 years and look back and be glad that you had the extra knowledge and made the time commitments that led them into the career that you are passionate about. She also thinks that someone should not go into STEM for the sake of going into STEM.
Psychology is cool because you can minister to others without being in their face gospel Christianity. She gets to answer the questions, “how do you have that peace”, “where do you get that grace”, and “why are you so convinced that there is so much love in the world when all I am experiencing is crap.” To be able to go into the field of psychology and bounce around a little bit and go through health psychology and help in that way. Then, with counseling psychology you are able to minister in a different way. The concepts are pretty uniformed, but they are pretty applicable across the board.
One thing Lizzy would want others to know about her is that she really wants to be in a field that she is passionate about and she thinks that even though it does not always seem applicable, taking her STEM classes has lead her there and she is really grateful for it.
It is worth the time management, time commitments, and some of the stressors that comes with it!
It was such a pleasure to interview Lizzy and get to know her story! Stay tuned for more stories!
