Hello! My name is Sarah Haurin (rhymes with Heron), and I am a sophomore at Duke. Along with being pre-med, I am pursuing a double major in neuroscience and German. I grew up outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I originally fell in love with Duke both because of its vast research opportunities and also its mild winters. In grade school, a requirement to read nonfiction books led me to start reading popular science books for fun. Beginning with books about forensic science and articles about the chemistry of cooking, I soon expanded my interest to include natural and health sciences.

Since then, I have discovered my favorite genres to be abnormal psychology and biomedical research (my favorites being You Are Not So Smart and The Psychopath Whisperer), which interestingly enough make great beach reads (as evidenced by this picture of me from my family’s most recent vacation to Hilton Head Island, SC). In high school, I decided to take this love of reading scientific literature to a new place, and I joined the school newspaper, which allowed me to share recent and exciting findings with my peers through my articles in our health and science pages.

Sarah reading non-fiction at the beach.

I have always loved writing, which is what originally led me to joining my high school newspaper, and through my roles as section editor and eventually editor-in-chief, I came to appreciate the whole writing and publishing process. At Duke, I have written several articles for The Chronicle about the impressive and diverse ongoing research going on here at Duke.

I hope that being a well-rounded person, by allowing myself to enjoy activities not directly related to my majors, will eventually help me to be a better doctor, but for now I just enjoy the ability to combine my loves of writing and science. I hope to be able to further pursue this combination by writing for the Duke Research Blog.

One of the aspects of Duke’s community that I love the most is its diversity, which extends from the people who make up the student and faculty to the passions and interests that they pursue. I hope that writing for the Duke Research Blog will provide me with the opportunity to meet more of the incredibly passionate people who make up Duke’s campus.

Post by Sarah Haurin