Senior Spotlight May 2021 – Mya Sears

Senior Spotlight May 2021 – Mya Sears

This year we are continuing our tradition of Senior Spotlights! For everyone, 2020 and 2021 have been challenging years, but we want to highlight our amazing seniors for preserving through these difficult times.

Meet Mya Sears! She’s from Lincoln, Nebraska, and she got guidance in high school to pursue meteorology.

“I couldn’t decide on a college major during my junior year of high school, so I took a career quiz that told me I should be a meteorologist,” she said. “I loved math, science, and weather, so I decided to give meteorology a try. I’m incredibly grateful that I took a chance on the quiz result!”

So she drove down the Great Plains and headed for Norman! During her time at OU, Mya was a part of OWL, SCAN, the New Student Mentorship Program (NSMP), and a brief guest star appearance as a Weather Friend.

To her, the toughest part of college was developing a healthy mentality about school.

“In high school and early college, I was so focused on taking the most/hardest classes and getting good grades that I dealt with a lot of burnout,” Mya said. “When I began to enjoy the process of learning and stopped setting unrealistic standards for myself, I found a lot more passion in meteorology.”

But college is not all difficult times!

“I loved the opportunity to work on the TORUS project during the summer of 2019,” she said. “It was an incredible experience to observe the development of supercells and launch weather balloons from the LIDAR vehicle. It was also fun to meet everyone from undergraduates to senior scientists in the field!”

After graduation in May, Mya will be spending the summer camping and hiking before moving to Hawaii! She’ll be pursuing a graduate degree in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she’ll work as a TA and attend classes under the AMS Graduate Fellowship.

Congratulations, Mya! The School of Meteorology is excited to see all you do in the future!