What is graduate school really like, and how do you know whether a master’s degree or PhD is the right fit? In this episode, we turn the microphone toward one of our own hosts, Max Hansen, as he reflects on his journey from undergraduate student to earning a Master of Science in Epidemiology at the University of Iowa and preparing to begin his PhD. Max shares how he discovered public health, why research became his passion, and what ultimately convinced him to continue his education.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Lauren Lavin:

Hello everybody, and welcome back to Plugged in to Public Health. If you’ve been a longtime listener, today’s guest probably needs no introduction. Max is one of our podcast hosts, but today, we’re turning the microphone around and giving you the chance to learn more about his academic journey. After completing his undergraduate degree and recently earning his master’s in epidemiology at the University of Iowa, Max is preparing to begin his PhD this fall.

In this episode, we talk about what graduate school is really like from choosing a program and navigating research to completing a thesis, finding mentors, and deciding whether pursuing a PhD is the right next step. Whether you’re an undergrad considering public health, a master’s student thinking about what’s next, or simply curious about what life as a graduate student actually looks like, this conversation offers practical advice and an honest look at the experiences that have shaped Max’s path. I’m Lauren, and I’m joined today by Max, and if it’s your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student-run podcast that talks about major issues in public health, and how they’re relevant to anyone, both in and outside the field of public health. So let’s get Plugged in to Public Health.

Plugged in to Public Health is produced and edited by the students of the University of Iowa College of Public Health, and the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, Max. I know listeners have already heard you, but if you could introduce yourself, just give us some background to get started, that would be great.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, so my name is Max Hansen. I’m going into my first year in the PhD program at the Epi Department at the University of Iowa. Been here my whole academic career, so very excited to continue staying here and continuing to work on my research, which is primarily focused on dementia, but really open to a lot of ideas, I think. Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

So let’s start all the way at the beginning. You did your undergrad at Iowa, then master’s, and now PhD. I guess what made you decide Iowa in the beginning?

Max Hansen:

Yeah, so my sister was actually going here. She’s two years older than me, so I went on a tour of this campus when I was a sophomore in high school, and the tour just really always stuck with me. I visited a lot of other schools like Marquette. I visited Tulane as well, which was a pretty high part of my list too. But Iowa just really had that, I know this is a boilerplate message at this point, but it really just had that small town feel. There was not too much big uppity city feelings that I was getting there, and all the people that I was talking to reminded me of home, very humble, very kind, and I was just very attracted to the idea of the community that was here. So that got me here for undergrad, yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Iowa is, both the state, the city of Iowa City and the college, it’s so unique, and if people ever get a chance to come to Iowa City, I highly recommend it because I think it’s the epitome of a college town, but in the best way possible, so I totally get that. What was your undergrad major in?

Max Hansen:

My undergrad major was originally biochemistry, and I was a pre-med student. And then in the spring of my freshman year, I took Fundamentals of Public Health, I was also struggling actively with P Chem II and Foundations, just those introductory level bio and chem courses, I guess, “introductory.”

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, they’re hard.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, and I was feeling the burn of them a little bit, and I was not really looking forward to the idea of, at the time, my major required me to take Calc II as well. I was in Calc I at the time.

Lauren Lavin:

Icky.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, it required O Chem as well, Organic Chemistry, and all of that stuff just didn’t really seem like a good fit for me. I think the other thing that motivated my shift to public health as my undergraduate degree, switching from biochemistry, was getting some experience in the hospital setting. I got a few, not many, but a few volunteer hours just working in the hospital setting, and I just am not a fan. There’s too much going on. There’s a million different arms trying to drag you in every single direction, and I can’t see myself working under those conditions for the rest of my life.

Lauren Lavin:

Which is very valuable experience to get early on rather than later, right?

Max Hansen:

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I’d highly recommend, or sooner, if you’re interested in health sciences, whatever it may be, get experience in that stressful environment early, because then it’ll tell you if you are willing to do it or not.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Just in general, I think that’s good advice for undergrads is try to get as many experiences out in careers that you think you want to do, because oftentimes our perception of them is just different, and being able to do that early on is probably better.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like it also just helps you understand how you deal with your stress and what the best environment is for you to deal with it. Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

I think it’s sometimes so crazy that we make or let 18 year olds pick what they want to do for the rest of their life when they start college, because you just don’t know, and that’s not our fault. It takes some time, so you got to try things out.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, absolutely. In high school, I wanted to be an architect, and I had yet to take a single physics course, and that very much changed my mind the moment I took one.

Lauren Lavin:

So fair. Okay, so you did undergrad?

Max Hansen:

Yes.

Lauren Lavin:

Then you got a master’s in epi. What made you want to move from undergrad to master’s?

Max Hansen:

Yeah, so I was talking with Kim, the college’s advisor for the undergrads here, and she was suggesting that this undergrad to grad program was an option that was available to me. And the undergrad to grad program just allows you to complete the undergraduate and master’s degree within five years, so you save a year on tuition, et cetera. And I think the main thing that really attracted me about the idea was, oh, most people I see working in this space are getting their master’s degree. And I feel like I’ve learned so much in my undergrad degree, I want to just learn more, I want to specialize in something too. And that was really a great opportunity to do. And yeah, I think the other opportunities that were really nice to think about and actually be able to get, once I entered my fifth year of schooling was working as a GRA, working as a research assistant for professors, and actually being able to make those professional connections and start building those skills a bit more.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Max Hansen:

As an undergrad, I wasn’t able to work as those things.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, you get those experiences. Again, it’s like those experiences can shape where you want to go.

Max Hansen:

Absolutely, yeah. And the nice thing about the grad program too, I feel like is that they actually facilitate that work to come to you.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, absolutely. Especially here at Iowa.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, they want you to work. Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Yep, yeah. It’s an expectation as part of your learning experience is you’re going to get research experience by doing your GRA work.

Max Hansen:

And I honestly can’t imagine it any other way because-

Lauren Lavin:

I can’t either.

Max Hansen:

… I can’t imagine just taking a, oh, how to do research class and that’s being the-

Lauren Lavin:

And we’ll definitely take plenty of those, but it’s very different than boots on the ground, having to develop and do the projects on your own or within a team.

Max Hansen:

I’ve learned the IMRAD setup inside out at this point, right? But then I’m getting to writing a manuscript and then it’s like, oh, we have to think about the actual structure within this, we have to think about how we’re connecting A to B, et cetera. So it’s just like, yeah, there’s a lot more that comes into the actual practical use of it than learning the textbook methods for it.

Lauren Lavin:

Exactly. And, I would say the more people I’ve interacted with throughout the research project, you take little bits from everyone. One of the first research teams I worked with, she taught me how to, she wasn’t even necessarily teaching me, she’s like, “This is how I set up an introduction to a paper.” And now I use that every single time, just like a framework that I use.

And she probably didn’t even realize that was something she was sharing with me, but now I’m like, “Oh yeah, I use that all the time.” So you pick up those little things along the way, which are probably more helpful than anything you’re reading in a textbook.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, you’re building your little arsenal with tools.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So now that you’ve completed your master’s, what surprised you most about the program? And was there anything that was different than what you expected going in?

Max Hansen:

Yeah, I think the main thing that surprised me was the difference in the workload. There certainly was more work, but it was weird because it wasn’t like it felt like more work, it was just adding on a lot more stakes to said work. Where I would have weekly homework assignments in one class, those are now weekly quizzes. Instead of having a situation where we’re doing two small papers in a semester, we’re now doing one really large project that’s a 20, 30-page report at the end of the semester. So things like that where it’s like those smaller pieces that you were doing during those undergrad courses merge together and you try to actually produce these really big products out of your classes.

And that’s also really nice too. I feel like that’s something that gets overlooked because a lot of those materials can be used just to give yourself some sort of stake in a job application or something like that because you can turn in some sort of portfolio materials and be like, “Look at what I did in this course. I just took it. I know how to do this and I demonstrated it right here.”

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, you definitely have more tangible end products, and I think less scaffolding in graduate level classes. Even in some of my classes, we don’t have homework assignments. You’re expected to do practice problems or whatever you need to so that you can either take the test at the mid-semester or write a paper at the end, and there’s less of that check-in. You’re expected to be, I think, in charge of your own learning in a way that maybe you aren’t in undergrad, which I think is fair. Again, it’s a scaffolding process, so you should have learned that, and now you’re coming into it better prepared.

Max Hansen:

Yeah. I think there’s also, I totally feel like there’s that feeling of if you’re choosing to go to grad school, you want to learn. I feel like that sheds the checkpoints away, yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think every graduate student has their own learning curve, whether that’s in the classroom or just how to do a new type of schooling. What was your biggest challenge that you faced during your master’s program and how’d you work through it?

Max Hansen:

I think the biggest challenge that I faced was starting to do lit reviews, diving into the literature on the topics I was interested in. I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was, that’s for sure. I think there’s a lot more that goes into finding papers that are relevant to the work that you want to do than people consider. They think that you could just go to PubMed and just look up, say I look up dementia and then I’m like, “Great, there’s the research I’m interested in.”

Yeah, it’s a lot more complicated than that, and I think if I didn’t touch back on the toolbox thing, if I hadn’t had just a couple seminars during some of my first year grad courses telling me how to use those literature searches and use things like boolean strings, et cetera. Actually trying to build those searches and optimize them to find what I need to find, I think that took me a long time, and I’m still working on it too.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, no, absolutely. So again, back to that toolbox, my first research assistantship was doing systematic reviews, and we actually did three of them. And not only was that good for publication purposes, but you learned how to do a literature review at literally the highest level. And I scanned thousands and thousands of articles, that was my job in or out on every single one of them. And then you also, I think for people who are outside the academic realm, you think of a librarian and you associate it with maybe your community library. Someone, they do great work in the community, but you don’t think about the librarians that are in academic institutions that are doing these searches. It’s just such a specific skill, and it’s so helpful, but you probably don’t associate with a librarian if you’re not in an academic setting. They’re worth their weight in gold.

Max Hansen:

Yeah. Oh my goodness, yeah. They are encyclopediatric with the knowledge that they have of the information that’s available here.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, and so many different subjects because the librarian has to service all of us. Okay. Did you find that there was a particular class or project, mentor, or experience that really shaped your interests, or influenced where you wanted to go next during your master’s program?

Max Hansen:

I think out of all of those, the biggest one that stands out is my thesis. But I guess for the sake of trying to just avoid that document, avoid talking about that document because I feel like I talk about it all the time.

Lauren Lavin:

We haven’t heard about it, so you’re welcome to talk about it.

Max Hansen:

Yeah. Yeah, my thesis for sure I’d say was just really the most influential piece of my program because it really, I was under the impression that I was going to just do a research project, get it on paper, get it approved by my committee, and that was going to be that, there’s my master’s. But what it actually did was it formed a lot of the questions that came out of that thesis are starting to form the next few years of work that I hope to do. So it’s not like this isolated project that was just done in a semester. Something that’s still evolving and hopefully going to be able to turn into a publication at some point too.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Max Hansen:

Certainly going to be incorporated into my eventual dissertation. I think that was certainly the largest step and really affirmed to me that I like the topics that I’m interested in, and especially the community that’s working in this field as well.

Lauren Lavin:

So for our listeners, does every master’s student have to create a thesis? And then I think some detail about what you did would be helpful just so that people know, what does it involve?

Max Hansen:

Yeah, so I had to do a thesis. I guess I didn’t have to do a thesis, I chose to do a thesis because I was getting an MS, a master’s of science while most of my peers are getting a master’s of public health, a MPH. And so the MPH individuals are going to be doing a practicum, which is a semester long field work position where you’re working with some sort of local partner and trying to work on an actual practical project with them that turns into a poster presentation.

The thesis is somewhat similar. You’re definitely still interacting with those partners as needed, especially internally in the college. There’s a lot of great resources, whether that be professors or just a lot of textbooks lying around that, believe it or not, I actually have a lot of good information in them. What differs the thesis is that it has to come from your own interests. A lot of times, the practicum gets set up for you. You’ll be talking with an advisor and then they will ask what you’re interested in, but they’re going to get you that position and it may not be 100% what you had in mind for what you’re going to do.

Lauren Lavin:

Right.

Max Hansen:

That thesis on the other hand, it’s a double-edged sword because that sounds like it stinks, but then you’re given the entire world and you’re like, “Yeah, choose whatever you want to do.”

Lauren Lavin:

That’s how I feel about my dissertation right now, so I get that.

Max Hansen:

Yeah. And I remember I went in for my first early defense of my thesis, they call it a prospectus defense. It’s just to say, “I haven’t done the project yet, but I want to make sure that it’s going to work and just get the go ahead from my committee.”

And my first question was very broad. It was asking how a group of risk factors impact someone’s dementia risk. And I just didn’t have enough experience with that sort of data to really understand what type of project that was going to be. I remember my primary advisor on my thesis, Dr. Platt, he told me, he was like, “You could probably do an entire career of research trying to answer this question.”

And I was like, “Yeah, I didn’t realize.” So I think having to really get into that niche and narrow it down, I ended up narrowing it down to diabetes being related to dementia risk.

Lauren Lavin:

Oh, interesting.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, it was really-

Lauren Lavin:

And what’d you find?

Max Hansen:

I found inconclusive results simply because my data… I think we’re on the side that it does influence dementia risk in the sense that diabetes increases your risk for dementia. However, my study was a little bit poorly designed just with the data that I had. I was using the Health and Retirement Study and I was using biomarker data that they have. But the cohorts that get that biomarker data, because it’s a lot of details, I’m not going to get too deep into it, but there’s a lot of missing data and that ended up affecting my cohort size. And then before you knew it, there’s a lot of healthy survivors in my cohort and it’s making it appear as though, oh, if someone has diabetes and they made it to this study and they’re super old and they don’t have dementia, then that means that diabetes is protecting them from dementia, which obviously is likely not the case.

Lauren Lavin:

Not the case probably.

Max Hansen:

Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Max Hansen:

But that did end up coming out. And I think at first I was disappointed, but then as I talked with my professors a bit more and just looked into the project itself, it was actually interesting and cool to just see that bias come out in an unnatural way, right? I feel like a lot of times when we’re talking about bias in epi and really just public health research as a whole, we don’t actually get to see it happen and actually see it influence something. We just talk about it hypothetically. And it’s one of those things that you have to run into practically to be able to see, oh, okay, there is some weight to this. I need to consider some things to try and remove this from my study.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. This just gives such good insight into how complicated it is to pull conclusive evidence from all of these messy real world data sets, and we’re complex and pulling data from that is also complex.

Max Hansen:

If I had any advice for someone working with a dataset like that, one of those big 10,000 row data sets is just even before, because you usually have to put in the access request, whatever it may be to get access to that data. Just familiarize yourself with as much as you can about the dataset. Read every data dictionary out there, have access to all those resources, have them downloaded on your computer and make sure that they’re open to you. Because if you don’t know the data, then it’s just, if you don’t know how that dataset’s structured, you’re never going to get anywhere, it’s just going to be going in circles for months.

Lauren Lavin:

100%, great advice. So a lot of students debate, maybe not a lot, but there is a subset of us that debate, do you get the master’s and enter the workforce or do you go on to a PhD? Obviously, you have decided to go onto a PhD. How did you make that decision and what convinced you that was the next step?

Max Hansen:

Yeah, I think when I think of a PhD, especially at a research intensive university like Iowa is, I really feel like its end goal is to train you on how to do research, and not necessarily in your particular field because I feel like a lot of the lessons you learn about the research process can be interchangeable across many industries. I just think that the PhD in particular is very just research-focused and trying to get you to understand how to drive that boat yourself. I feel like as an MS student, I had my committee with me most of the way, and while you still have a committee at the PhD level, I feel like you’re doing a lot more of the heavy lifting at that stage.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Max Hansen:

So I think-

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, you’re expected to pull them in. They’re not necessarily guiding you through the process. They’re there if you need them, but you have to engage.

Max Hansen:

Exactly, yeah. There’s not going to be an add-on from them necessarily, it’s going to be self-driven, yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. And even when you’re having them review something or brainstorm, they’re like, “Okay, here’s maybe what I would do.”

But you’re expected to be the expert in that, and you can take in their thoughts and then you’re like, “Actually, I don’t think that works.” There’s a little bit more push and pull, and you’re expected to develop a skillset and knowledge that you can take in all of this information.

Max Hansen:

And I think that’s something I feel like a lot of students don’t necessarily know going in, is the idea that at this level, you’re not necessarily, not to be prideful, but it’s like you really are right at the precipice of being equal to your professors, right? They’re becoming your peers at this point.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Max Hansen:

And you’re all in this academic space trying to understand something. And exactly like you said, this is your niche as a PhD student. You’re the expert. Most of these professors and no-

Lauren Lavin:

It’s not their area.

Max Hansen:

Yeah, and more power to them. I don’t blame them for not doing a lit review for every PhD student’s niche.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Max Hansen:

I think that would be a bit much, so yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Max Hansen:

And it gives that independence to the student too, yeah. So I guess moral of the story is the main thing that made me go for my PhD was just that my MS really showed me that I really liked the research process, and I want to learn more about how to steer that ship myself.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. This fall, you’re going to be starting your PhD in epi. What specifically drew you to that field? Some people get a master’s in a specific area and then switch out, but why did you decide to keep going with epi and how does it compliment your previous training that you’ve already done?

Max Hansen:

Yeah, I think epi really just, I love that it’s a mix of everything. I feel like biostats is amazing, very math heavy. I love math, but maybe not on the theory side of things. I don’t like the idea of revolutionizing a formula or something like that. I don’t think I’m capable of doing something like that, but I love using statistics and being able to apply that mathematics. And I also love being able to still have some sort of community impact, right? I feel like I almost find epi as a great blend of all of the departments here, really, because you can go in so many directions with it. And given that during my undergrad, I had a lot of experience in community and behavioral health and learning a lot about qualitative analysis. Epi was a nice little spot for me to bring my mixed methods or develop my mixed methods and research ideas because I already had that qual training and epi really helped me center down my quant training.

And I think something that’s also overlooked about epi is that there’s plenty of qual work that’s going on in the space as well. It’s usually quite difficult to do that at the large scale that a lot of epi papers are doing. You’re probably not going to be able to have a 10,000 person data set for qual unless you’ve got a hundred person research team. But other than that, yeah, I think it was just a beautiful blend of everything and you can really go in any direction that you’d like to with it.

Lauren Lavin:

I agree that I think epi is such a blend of all of the different departments and the great public health, but community-facing opportunity with a lot of still science, quantitative, especially at its foundation.

Max Hansen:

Yeah. It’s like a little mixed bag of all the best parts of everything to me.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. So as you’re preparing to start your PhD, what are you most excited about, and what do you think will be the biggest adjustment from your master’s experience?

Max Hansen:

I think the thing I’m most excited about, and it’s not necessarily to do with the PhD, but to an extent, yeah, is I’m going to be on track to get my first publication this year, this academic year. Which is so crazy to think about because I feel like I’ve been writing manuscripts for years, but we’re finally going to get one of them across the finish line, it seems, which I’m very happy to see. And I guess the biggest adjustment that I’m curious about is how much I’m going to be getting integrated into that publication process, whether that be with my current advisor or just other people within the department, right? I’ve had during my master’s, some of the professors, especially during my thesis, talking to me about the data that I was using and talking about potential ideas that I could go off with using said data.

And I still have access to that data for another six or seven months, and they are very much open, door is open. So I think that’s going to be a really cool aspect to it is that as I’ve spent more time in this department, I’ve gained those connections and feel like I can really start to just walk in the door and propose an idea and we can just start working on a project. So yeah, I think that’s the biggest adjustment, but I’m looking forward to it as well.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Adjustment, but also something that’s beneficial.

Max Hansen:

Yeah. I think it gives you just good experience with communicating with other people in the research space.

Lauren Lavin:

Absolutely. So for students who may be considering graduate school, what advice would you give them trying to decide whether they should continue on to a master’s, or go from a master’s to a PhD, or if another path is a better fit?

Max Hansen:

Yeah, I think graduate school as a whole, you should only do if, like we alluded to earlier, you should only do if you want to learn. I feel like you find that itch for wanting to learn more during your junior, senior year. And if you’re not really feeling that itch, it’s okay as well because you can still look at your options that are available to you. But I really do think it’s a matter of, oh, I took this undergrad degree, and I liked A, B, and C about it. How can I get more of A, B, and C and not the rest of the alphabet? How can I specialize? How can I go into a particular field that’s going to set me up for a career elsewhere? A lot of people with just an undergrad in public health, while you can certainly go out into the workforce and get a job with that.

I feel like a lot of people with that degree, and myself included at the time, don’t really have a lot of focus with what they want to do. And while that’s okay, there’s still plenty of skills that you pick up during that undergrad. Grad school really helps you narrow down what you want that focus to be, and what you really want to do with everything you learned in both undergrad and in the master’s program or PhD. And I guess with PhD in particular, like I was saying, yeah, research. I think everybody likes the idea of being called doctor or whatever, but it really is. It’s not necessarily a thing of, “Oh, I want a title.” It’s like, no, you need to want to write manuscripts and put your data out into the world for people to see.

Lauren Lavin:

Absolutely, that’s really great advice. So finally, if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice on the first day of your master’s program, what would it be?

Max Hansen:

I would say take your time. I feel like as master’s students coming out of undergrad, you’re still, a lot of my peers still had a lot of pep in their step from the undergrad days, right? And a lot of them are coming off of breaks from school as well, so they’re very excited to get back into that academic environment and learn more. The biggest issue is that master’s program for most people is two years, and so before you know it, you’re done. And so you can get caught up in so much during those two years. The coursework is picking up, right, there’s bigger projects like we were saying, and you can just get lost in it all. And you just get so burnt out if you’re not taking time for yourself. So I would say just take your time and communicate what you need and make sure you join as much community as you possibly can. The people that are around you are going through the exact same things that you’re going through. And if we communicate about it, it’s certainly not going to make it better, but it will make it easier.

Lauren Lavin:

Great advice. What a great way to wrap this up. Max, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today. We’re so glad that you are our host on the podcast, and I’m glad that listeners get to hear a little bit more about you and your experiences today.

Max Hansen:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Happy to be here, happy to do these.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s it for our episode this week. A big thank you to Max for stepping out from behind the host microphone and sharing his graduate school journey with us. One of my favorite takeaways from today’s conversation is that graduate school isn’t simply about earning another degree, it’s about discovering what excites you, learning to ask meaningful research questions, and finding the community and mentors to help you grow along the way. Whether you’re considering a master’s degree, thinking about pursuing a PhD, or just beginning to explore careers in public health, I hope this episode gave you a clearer picture of what those paths can look like.

This episode is hosted and written by Lauren Lavin, and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode, would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health. Have a suggestion for our team? You can reach us at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.