The first step that jumpstarted her research journey was joining Dr. Kristin Horan's lab in 2018. As she collaborated on diverse projects, she created a scholarly identity and gained insight into the work required to fulfill a research project and the tools available to researchers. She learned to engage with participants, measure abstract concepts with appropriate coding definitions, evaluate data on remote association tests, and navigate government archival data from occupational safety regulations. During the tasks, she learned about objective physical measures and self-reported scales to evaluate health outcomes, guiding her motivation for an independent project.