From Edmonton to
EMT
OSU JUNIOR BALANCES STUDENT AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE
T
wenty-year-old Trinity Austin has a unique balancing act at Oklahoma State University as a student, lab assistant, club president and EMT. Austin is a biochemistry and molecular biology junior at OSU. Austin and her family moved from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2011, when her dad transferred jobs. “Moving to America was just putting us in a different place,” Trinity Austin said. “My brother and I didn’t really notice much of a difference.” Julie Austin, Trinity’s mother, said she noticed differences between U.S. academics and academics in Canada. “Canada doesn’t have anything like the National Merit Scholarship or the Presidential Scholarship program,” Julie Austin said. “Trinity just heard about all these new things and said, ‘I want those.’” Trinity Austin was determined to earn those prestigious awards, so she pursued them. She earned the National Merit Scholarship, was a semifinalist for the U.S. Presidential Scholarship program, and was the valedictorian of her class, Julie Austin said. “In Canada, the government subsidizes students’ tuition,” Trinity Austin
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said. “No big merit scholarships are available there.” Trinity Austin initially applied to schools outside of Oklahoma. However, her plans changed. “I was looking at what other schools I applied to, and my brother was already at OSU,” Trinity Austin said. “So, I decided to just go for OSU.” Once on campus, Trinity Austin set out to get involved in as many extracurricular activities as she possibly could, she said. “I basically just signed up for every club and extracurricular that sounded interesting to me,” Trinity Austin said. These extracurriculars included The Biochemistry Club, iGEM, and the MMA and Karate Club. “iGEM stands for Internationally Genetically Engineered Machine and is a competition originally created by MIT to promote synthetic biology and the advancement and research of synthetic biology for undergraduate students in colleges across the world,” Trinity Austin said. iGEM is a new club at OSU and brings a new concept to the table. Trinity Austin found her spot within iGEM as the club president and as a member of the cloning lab. In the lab, members work with E. coli bacteria for