Seattle Arts and Lectures Intern - Project Summary
Summarize your proposed experiential learning activity, including the primary focus of your activity, your intended actions, and the expectations of your supervisor and/or organization/partners. I am continuing an internship that I held last school year in our new remote environment. The purpose of this work is to provide assistance to Seattle Arts and Lectures' Writers in the Schools program. My work includes doing research to provide resources for the active writing instructors to use in their classrooms, attending literary events hosted by Seattle Arts and Lectures and providing write-ups to be posted on their blog, and potentially assisting an instructor in an online writing classroom if scheduling allows. Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your activity embodies this definition. My activity demonstrates service in the way it engages with students and schools within the Seattle community. The Writers in the Schools program provides creative writing classes to students free of charge, subsidized by both the schools and fundraising on the part of WITS. WITS also does work with inpatients at Seattle Children's Hospital, allowing pediatric patients to engage and express themselves creatively. In providing both direct and behind-the-scenes aid to the WITS program, I am helping another year's worth of students to learn and grow artistically and to find their voices through the written word. How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to gain from it? I selected this engagement because of my deep fondness for Seattle Arts and Lectures and the work that they are doing, especially through Writers in the Schools. My work with Seattle Arts and Lectures incorporates aspects of many different career paths that I'm interested in, namely creative writing, teaching, and working for an arts- and literary-based organization. I hope that this experience allows me to aid and inspire young writers in creating their work, and to understand what working for an arts-based organization consists of for my future career planning. How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it speak to your broader education goals and experiences? Writers in the Schools connects directly to my creative writing major, and I am able to use some of the skills and knowledge obtained in my classes to help the students I'm working with. I also took a class called The Theory and Practice of Teaching Writing; skills I learned there also correlate directly with WITS. More broadly, my work with SAL and WITS gives me experience in a similar environment to where I could see myself working after graduation, and combines several things that I love: writing, education, and literature and the arts more broadly. How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners? I have spent a year working with WITS already and gotten very positive feedback for my work there. The teachers I assisted with in the classroom and the staff I worked with in the office both valued my extra set of hands and my willingness to do anything that needed to be done. The students I worked with also enjoyed having a college student in their classrooms, to work with and learn from. I hope that I can continue to be a positive and productive presence at Seattle Arts and Lectures even from afar.
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One of my very favorite aspects of being a current student in the Honors community is the ability to help welcome other students to UW and Honors. This has manifested in many ways over the years, from volunteering at the Honors Hearth my freshman year to my extended time as a Peer Educator to my participation in virtual prospective student info sessions since admissions prep has moved online. Below are the initial request sent out by my Honors advisor for students willing to volunteer their time helping with such sessions and the follow-up she sent (saved to my Notes page) when I'd enthusiastically volunteered. I felt like I thrived during that session, letting my capacity for bubbliness while in front of a crowd take over while maintaining composure and organization when directing questions to various panelists and clarifying details myself. After the success of this first session, I signed up for more throughout the fall and winter, even emailing the advisors requesting they contact me if they needed additional help. I valued this experience because it put me in my element, feeling knowledgable and helpful, excited and in control. It definitely makes me think I might be able to explore a future in advising or admissions or similar - something that gives me the chance to inform and console and generally support students through this transitional period of uncertainty.
When I realized I was on track to complete my Bachelor's degree in three years, one of the first things I considered was applying to graduate school. An MFA in creative writing would be a logical continuation of my undergraduate creative writing major, and completing a program would only take two years, a timeline made easier by my early graduation. Emboldened, I spent the summer before my third year refining materials for a writing portfolio (the most significant aspect of a fine arts degree application) and began the process of assembling applications in the fall. This task ended up being even more massive than I had anticipated. Each school had their own separate application with different requirements for essays, portfolio page counts, letters of recommendation, and more. It took me the better part of three months and guidance from countless professors and advisors (with particular thanks to Maya Sonenberg) to finally submit apps to the eleven schools I had chosen for their individual specialties, prestige, and potential for funding. There are countless artifacts I could include, from application materials to email receipts from schools to endless exchanges with my chosen recommenders, but instead I have chosen to upload two images to encapsulate the experience. The first is an embroidery project I made for Maya as a thank-you for the time and effort she devoted to advising me on selection of schools, refinement of portfolios, and construction of my personal statement, in addition to a letter of rec and other encouragement. The second is a picture I took of myself just after finally submitting my final application. Now all that is left is the waiting game... waiting for acceptances and inevitable rejections, waiting to have some semblance of what my life will look like after June. Stay tuned...
I have managed to continue my internship with Seattle Arts and Lectures into the age of working from home, although remote interning certainly looks different than my weekly stints in and out of the office and classrooms pre-COVID-19. One of my major contributions this fall was as a guest writer for the SAL blog. After attending an online SAL lecture with my mom, I wrote up a reflection on the experience and what about it felt different and the same as before. I wrote a second post in January reflecting on mythology and its retellings after a lecture by Madeline Miller. It felt good to find a way to stay connected to this community even from afar, and I was happy with the chance to contribute in this way. Hopefully I will find more opportunities for service with SAL as the year unfolds.
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