LeaderShape
Over the winter break for the 2019-2020 academic year, I had the opportunity to go on a 6 day retreat designed to facilitate learning and personal growth focused around general and personal leadership styles. While there all of the participants were separated into small groups called family clusters. A picture of my family cluster is shown above. With family clusters the magic of LeaderShape truly revealed itself. All of us became very close as we learned more about each other and explored vulnerable and messy topics such as classism, how to change the world, and self-care. Our family cluster was there to support each other every step of the way and continues to exude the same level of support now. While there I learned more about who I am as a person and how I stand to grow as a leader. I learned the value of my words and that helping people doesn't always have to be constructive. While at LeaderShape, I refined my goals and came with the following vision of the world:
A world where everyone has the chance to be their best self is a world that supports and empowers every person using equitable education, universal healthcare, acceptance of gender and sexuality, rehabilitation programs, and equitable housing as everyday resources to fuel and power a world made of opportunities and support.
PD 2065: Social Justice Awareness and Global Health Experience
The Social Justice Awareness and Global Health Experience seminar and study abroad experience combined two of my favorite topics of discussion: social justice and healthcare. Although we were not able to do the study abroad portion of the class due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the class was informative, intriguing, and expanded my knowledge and opinions on a variety of topics.
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In the seminar, we explored the ethical entanglements of global health volunteering, the similarities and differences between having a drug addiction in the United States versus in Portugal, and examined our own personal ideas of inequality and equity as well as our own personal implicit biases.
Learning about these topics and confronting my own personal biases lead me to define my own personal ethics in terms that were clear. Additionally, I learned more than I ever knew about the experience and struggles of those who face an addiction to drugs. Overall, this seminar gave me the knowledge and tools to better understand and sympathize with the trials of drug addiction.
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Below is an infographic created during the seminar about global health volunteering. I chose this to better explain the complex relationships and effects of volunteering in healthcare globally.
Protégé Undergraduate Research Program
The Protégé Undergraduate Research Program and the subsequent Symposium are part of the university's initiative to involve more undergrad students in research as a whole. The Protégé program is specifically for first-year engineering students to introduce them to research with a mentor to help guide and integrate them.
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I worked with Dr. Greg Harris's lab over the summer of 2020 with the Protégé Program. Due to the beginnings of the Covid-19 pandemic at the time, I was unable to do any in-person research with the lab, however, I did attend the weekly meetings, conduct data analysis, and read many literature reviews as well as research papers.
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I learned so very much from this experience, from the experience of being in a lab to the topics of discussion in lab meetings to my own work on Schwann cells. I think the most important skills I learned are involved in the dynamic of a lab and navigating the academic world of research. While I learned much on the specific topics I read, wrote, and discussed, the more meaningful learning occurred just from the experience of being in an academic research lab.
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This experience had a profound impact on my career outlook and how I view the world of research. Before this summer experience, I thought that I wanted to be in a career centered around research. Over the course of this experience, I have gained a detailed understanding of what that career could look like. Applying this better understanding has allowed me to know the ways in which research is a great fit for me as a career but also the ways it isn't such a great fit. Overall, I feel significantly more confident in navigating potential careers after this experience.
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Below is a recording of my presentation at the end-of-summer Symposium!
UHP CRITS Fall 2022
The University Honors Program's Critical Reflection and Introspection Through Storytelling was an amazing experience. Each week we played DnD, explored ourselves, and reflected on our relationship with the world around us in a fun and unique way. The campaign took place on a fictional university campus where we had to navigate forgotten secrets and wily enemies. More importantly, however, we had to navigate our characters, their relationships, and our own relationships as players.
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Despite my prior interest, I had never played Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) before this. It was quite the learning curve at first but with such a welcoming and open environment, I looked forward to each Monday and even the few research hours I put into understanding the game. It was very nice to have a sort of "project" so to speak that I looked forward to every week, it helped me find joy in other things throughout the semester.
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My goal for this experience was to explore whom I wanted to grow into. I created the character I played as the person I wished I was at the start of college. I have learned so much about myself throughout the last 4 years of college. To play a character who had this knowledge about themselves at the start of college allowed me to be free to explore the different parts of myself that are "new" so to speak. From this exploration, I feel so much more secure in who I am and like I fit in my skin. I have more confidence in myself and a better idea of how I operate and want to live my life.
CRITS was such an awesome experience for me and the people I played with were simply the best. Below is a picture of us on Halloween, having a tremendous amount of fun.
