Kai Waddell hurled himself into his undergraduate career, eventually finding a community and a breadth of experiences.
But first, he had to slow down.
“Freshman me — he thought he had to do everything right away,” said Waddell, a Regents Scholar and Honors student. “Thank goodness he was gung ho. I appreciate it because he got a lot done, but that was the thought I had — get everything done, fast.”
Skip forward to his senior year, Waddell reflected on finding a much healthier balance through the years, and credited the support of his family, faculty mentorship, fellow undergraduate researchers, and good friends pursuing completely different interests.
Waddell, a microbiology major at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, will graduate with distinction May 17. He aims to pursue medical school after taking a gap year to prepare for the MCAT and application process. He will also be working for a Wisconsin health care company.
As a high school student at Lincoln East, Waddell was already racing toward his future. He picked Nebraska because he was awarded a Regents scholarship — covering nearly all his undergraduate costs — and he knew medical school would be expensive.
“Nebraska was a really good chance to get an undergrad degree at a great state institution,” he said. “I thought it was the most budget-conscious decision.”
But now he’s thankful for the entirety of his undergraduate experience.
“I think it was the best decision I ever made,” he said. “I've met a great group of friends. I have connections that will last a lifetime. And everybody at UNL was helping me succeed. When you have a support system like that — it absolutely has helped me do everything that I've been able to do, and I couldn’t be more thankful.”
Waddell is especially grateful for the mentorship of Lindsey Crawford, assistant professor of biochemistry. He joined Crawford’s lab as an undergraduate researcher his freshman year and continued to work in her lab for the rest of his undergraduate career, even becoming an INBRE Scholar in 2023. The program is administered through the National Institutes of Health and supports undergraduates for two years as they pursue biomedical research. The opportunity to study human cytomegalovirus in Crawford’s lab and build a network of like-minded scholars was meaningful for Waddell.
“I have five other people with me who are in my year, who are also doing research, and we’ve formed a community you can build off of, along with two great advisers who help us out,” Waddell said. “And Dr. Crawford, I've known her for three and a half years now, and she's the one person who's seen me go through all of this the whole time from freshman year. She's absolutely been a rock.”
Though he plans to follow in his mother’s footsteps as a physician, his parents were supportive no matter what he pursued, and they encouraged him to take advantage of the full breadth of opportunities available. Those opportunities took him to South Africa, where he spent a semester studying during his sophomore year.
“My mom had really pushed it,” Waddell said. “She said, ‘This is one chance you're going to have to in your life to do this. I never got to, and I would have loved to, so you should do it.’ I was sitting at the study abroad office, and they just had a map of all the places you could go, and South Africa was out there. Not many people go to South Africa. I was really excited.”
His education abroad helped him appreciate new cultures and pushed him out of his comfort zone.
“I roomed with eight people, with a big common area in an apartment complex, so you were forced to meet your neighbors, and I think that really helped my social skills,” Waddell said.
Being away from the daily grind of his campus life also shaped a new perspective for Waddell — making sure he made the most of his collegiate years, not just in the classroom and lab. He hopes his younger peers will heed his advice.
“I worked three jobs, had classes and was doing research my freshman year,” he said. “I was getting burned out. I love the football culture here, and I didn’t even go to a game that year.
“If you don't pace yourself, there's a lot of things you'll miss that you’ll regret. I think it's important to understand there needs to be a balance between going after something right now, versus pacing yourself and allowing yourself to create a community and experience things over time.”
