Maya Barnard-Davidson was fascinated from an early age by biology and the sciences. After suffering a traumatic brain injury due to a skiing accident in December 2014 on Mount Hood, and after years of hard work, she graduated with her bachelor’s degree in biology Sunday.

Barnard-Davidson was in a coma for nearly three weeks in early 2015 and had to relearn how to walk and speak. Doctors weren’t sure she’d wake up and afterward, she was in rehab for months. 

She studied part-time for five years at OSU-Cascades to get her degree, and participated in undergraduate research and a few different clubs.

“Actually being in classes and being around people and understanding and learning from the experiences that I’ve had has been fantastic and I’ve met a lot of really amazing humans,” she said. “I didn’t even think I would take an extra year, I thought I would take a lot longer to get here.”

Barnard-Davidson, 30, is interested in going into the veterinary sciences or plant pathology with a specialization in mycology — that’s fungus. She’s always been fascinated by mushrooms. She is also contemplating graduate school. For now, she’s planning to take time off to rest, help on her parents’ farm east of Bend and figure out her next step.

“(In seventh grade) we were learning about mitosis, meiosis, and I was like, this is so cool. I just kind of fell in love with it there,” she said. “I know that when I was 19, and had my head injury, I had a severe traumatic brain injury, I didn’t know that I could actually go the length to get to the biology degree. Which I did end up doing, but it just took me a little longer.”

She took exercise classes and retook academic classes she’d taken before her brain injury at Central Oregon Community College. Around 2019, Barnard-Davidson began attending OSU-Cascades. She took one term of full-time classes, but quickly realized it was too much stress and cut back to part-time.

“It was fun to relearn everything, or just to bring it up from wherever it was,” she said. “I like to do what I say and say what I do…I like to have a solid foundation in myself and who I am and what I say.”

She’s been working on undergraduate biology research focused on the gray wolf microbiome and bacteria, and said it gave her microbiology lab experience before taking the class. She has the opportunity to keep working on research this summer. 

At OSU-Cascades, Barnard-Davidson was part of the Bioscience Journal club and began a skiing club for students. She advised future seniors to get involved and to make connections at school.

“The only really solid plans that I do have at this moment would be to help fix my parents’ farm, because I haven’t been able to spend as much time doing farmwork while I’m in school as I would have liked to have done, although I didn’t realize how heavy lifting this biology degree would end up being, and it was a lot more than I thought,” she said.

Barnard-Davidson had days at OSU-Cascades that began at 7 a.m. and didn’t end until 6:30 p.m. She’s planning to take at least a year to rest. Traumatic brain injuries can have long-term effects including issues with memory, language, attention and executive functioning. Rest is a component of healing and managing stress.

“I can’t be too hard on myself. I am not built the same way as anybody else but myself,” she said. “There are so many divergent things in this life, and we cannot judge ourselves on another person’s experience because no two experiences are going to ever be the same.”