This post offers more information on the personal aspects of my life, including my inspiration to pursue a career in Neuroscience.
Welcome to my first blog post! I plan to use this page to as an informal place to post updates about my research projects, along with any personal/career developments. That being said, this first post will simply provide you a little bit of background information about me, should you want to follow along!
I was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick and have lived in a few different cities across the Eastern side of Canada. Most notably, I lived in Montreal, Quebec for 9 years. Living in Montreal allowed me to completely immerse myself in French Canadian culture and become fluent in both English and French. Recently, my mother moved to a small town a few hours away from Toronto, Ontario, which is where I call home when I am not away in University.
I am currently a senior at the University of South Dakota pursuing my B.S. in Cognitive Neuroscience. I chose the University of South Dakota because I loved the campus and I wanted to be a part of their swim team, which I will get to later. I expect to graduate in May of 2022, and would like to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience from there. My dream is to become a professor of Neuroscience, as it would allow me to continue conducting research and to share my knowledge with others. I had always wanted to be a teacher, but that dream was put on the back burner after I developed a lust for dentistry in high school.
I actually entered USD as a Medical Biology major, and have taken all the pre-requisite courses for dental school. During my second year, I felt disinterested in the required courses and was looking to make a change. My academic advisor decided to put me in a few different electives so that I could find something I was passionate about. I took an introductory course as a sophomore called "Exploring Neuroscience" and immediately fell in love with the wonders of the human brain. I walked to my advisors office after my first day in that class to change my major to Neuroscience, and I have never looked back.
My major change lead to a career goal change, as I mentioned before. I successfully applied for a few research grants this year as a junior, which allowed me to explore topics I was passionate about. I have focused my projects on examining the benefits of neurofeedback training in athletic performance, and also creating a self-contained, wearable EEG. I won't say too much more about these projects now, as they will be the source of my future posts.
As I mentioned before, I chose USD to be a part of their swimming team. I began competitive swimming when I was 8 years old for the Pointe Claire Swim Club, which is a rather large and highly ranked team in Canada. Throughout my Canadian swimming career, I was fortunate to qualify for and attend many national and provincial championships. I had dreamt of coming to the United States to continue swimming in college, which is how I ended up at USD. I am a member of the all-time Top 10 ranking (Coyote Top 10) in numerous events, and have made a number of finals at our conference championships each year. I have also been fortunate enough to have been voted Team Captain for both my junior and upcoming senior year. I have made some of the best memories as a member of the USD swim and dive team, and I am blessed to have a great coaching staff. You can check out my official roster page here; https://goyotes.com/sports/swimming-and-diving/roster/kristen-quigley/10512
A final piece of my life that I'd like to share is that I am a proud member of the Indigenous community as a status Native American of the Metis Nation of the Rising Sun. My Indigenous heritage allowed me to compete at the 2017 North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) in swimming, where I was able to connect with other Indigenous athletes who were my age. As someone who did not grow up on reserve, this was truly an eye opening experience as to the lack of organized sports available on reserves across North America. I had such a positive experience being an athlete that I applied to become an Assistant Coach for NAIG 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the competition was postponed, but I am still signed on to be a coach in 2022 if all goes smoothly. Being a coach will allow me to share my vast swimming knowledge with my peers, and it is an experience I am extremely excited for. My results from NAIG 2017 can be found here; https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/45694/ontario-athletes-shine-at-north-american-indigenous-games
