Winter 2019
- _ imw6@uw.edu
- Nov 14, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 8, 2022
Winter 2019 in 3 words: consistency, familiarization, creation
Classes: French 301, Political Science 203: intro to international relations, and Psych 101 Quarter in Review: To combat the dreariness of winter quarter, I tried to stay busy with extracurriculars, diving deep into subjects that I care about, and socializing. I joined The Daily, taking an extra class to learn about journalism, and began teaching art part-time. I discovered that I really enjoy psychology and would consider majoring in it. I also definitely became more confident accessing on-campus resources and finding my way around UW.
Winter quarter, I taught art lessons for students in kindergarten through third grade at a local elementary school. These lessons cemented my appreciation for teachers--I realized first-hand how difficult classroom management can be, as well as the challenges of coming up with activities that can maintain the interest of children of varied ages. But more importantly, these art lessons demonstrated to me how important it is that adults let children exercise their imaginations and creativity, instead of stifling these traits. And this position aided me in recognizing that I'm capable of leaning into discomfort to grow my abilities as a leader. I absolutely loved being able to use this leadership role to help these children become confident in their artistic abilities and create masterpieces they were proud of.
After taking French 203 fall quarter, I decided that I want to obtain fluency in the language, and that I hope to pursue a French minor. This presentation for French 301 was when I first began to feel as though I had reached a degree of fluency in French--I was able to communicate information about a complex, nuanced topic (immigration), as well as use my language skills to articulate messages about equality and social justice. The most challenging part of this presentation was narrowing down the scope of my project into a ten-minute presentation; research (done entirely in French) was also initially quite difficult for me. Ultimately, this presentation helped me gain confidence in my spoken French skills and my ability to present information in French to an audience in a digestible, accessible manner.
I signed up to write for The Daily, UW's student-run newspaper having prior high-school journalism experience and wanting to see what a larger-scale, more professional publication would require of its writers. I discovered that I really enjoy writing about on-campus sustainability initiatives--as a non-STEM major, I recognized that I enjoy helping make scientific topics more approachable to the general public and using my platform as a journalist to help the public reduce their environmental footprint. While I hope to eventually hold a role as an editor with The Daily, for the time being, I'm content continuing to write articles, because writing pushes me to me to interact with many different UW community members, stay aware of current events, and learn as much as I can about the university. This particular article got published in the print version of the paper, which made me feel accomplished as a writer. I did initially struggle with how constricting the journalistic writing style can feel, but after I got into the habit, I was able to find ways to be more expressive and write with my own voice in this format.
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