Former El Dorado graduate Kristen Thomas is now a neuroscientist, researching many different projects including schizophrenia.
Thomas is a former softball pitcher at Union, who pitched at El Dorado her junior and senior year when Union’s school was closed. She graduated from El Dorado in 2006.
She is also a former El Dorado News-Times/AmerCable Scholar Athlete of the Year and Softball Player of the Year.
Thomas now conducts her research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, where she has been for almost two years.
Her title is technically Doctoral Research Associate, also known as a postdoctoral researcher, and works under a tenured faculty member.
“One of my projects is working on trying to understand what’s happening in the brain at the age where most people start having symptoms of schizophrenia,” Thomas said.
She said most people are in their late teens or early 20s and she is studying what happens in a normal brain at that age that makes people more vulnerable to schizophrenia.
“Until fairly recently, people thought that your brain was done developing when you were a child, but really your brain keeps developing in subtle ways until probably your 30s,” she said.
She said she just “wandered” into the field, which was started by her interest in science classes in high school.
“I really liked biology and chemistry in particular,” she said. “So when I went to college, I said ‘OK, I’m going to be some kind of biology major.’”
Thomas went to college at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
Thomas was a National Merit Scholar, and said she settled on A&M because they offered a package of scholarships to National Merit Scholars.
“That pretty much covered all of my tuition and a fair amount of my living expenses while I was in college,” she said. “I graduated without any debt, which was really nice.”
She settled on a biochemistry major, but was also introduced to neuroscience, which she ended up minoring in.
“I didn’t really know much about the brain, so I said, ‘OK, I’m going to try this out,’ and I liked it,” she said. “I started working in a science lab on campus and decided that was what I wanted to keep doing — keep working in a lab and keep studying the brain.”
She went on to receive a Ph.D in neuroscience at Emory University.
She said playing softball in high school prepared her for college when it came to time management.
“From my junior to senior year I was taking AP classes and I had a lot of homework and at the same time I had to go to all of my regular season softball practices,” she said. “So there were a lot of times where I was on the bus on the way back from a game trying to finish up my homework, or getting home at 10 o’clock at night and having to study for a test.”
She said she didn’t have a lot of free time in high school and was very focused on her academics. She added that it was nice when she got to college, because she had more free time. “I was like, ‘wow, I have so much free time. All I have to do is study,’” she said.
She said playing in a tournament her senior year, where she pitched every game, stands out to her the most about playing softball in high school.
“It was just so exhausting,” she said. “I was pushing myself further than I’ve ever pushed myself before, and one of the games went into overtime.
“I was like, ‘I’m not sure if I’m going to make it through this,’ but I really wanted to, I want to take us to the end,” she said. “I did and we ended up winning the tournament. It was definitely the hardest I’ve ever pushed myself physically.”
She added that although it was tough, it was a good memory.
“I just remember the last pitch and realizing it was the end of the game and the end of the tournament, we had won, and thinking ‘thank goodness, I don’t think I would have made it another 10 minutes,’” she said. “But it was a really good feeling and it was a really great moment for the team.”
Now that both of her parents have passed away, Thomas doesn’t visit El Dorado as much, but still visits her family during the holidays.
Knowing everything she knows now, she said if she could give advice to her high school, softball-playing self, it would be to “chill out a little bit.”
“I was really determined to ace all of the exams and all of that,” she said. “And I realize now, like looking at other people’s GPAs and all of that, that we’re in the same place in life and it didn’t really do anything to put me ahead. I could have got a little more sleep and been a little less stressed out.”
Kaitlyn Rigdon can be reached at 870-862-6611 or [email protected].