Welcome to Year Two
My second year of college was a year of highs and lows. On one hand, I did a lot of good work this year, completing many of my projects that I am proudest of to date such as a few of those listed below. On the other hand, road blocks kept being thrown in my path, from the scale of the personal to the global, of course the most prominent being the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down the university in the final days of winter quarter. I feel like I also underwent some of my most significant growth this year, from learning to cook and take care of myself in my first apartment, to exploring opportunities inside the classroom and beyond, from internships and poetry readings, creative writing club to bubble tea with friends. I spent the year laying the foundations for learning and development as a writer and scholar.
Some happy moments from my second year: - Cooked a feast of pita wraps with chicken and hummus and potatoes with my roommate in our new apartment - Took pictures with Dubs!! (a bucket-list item for my time at UW) - Successfully taught and bonded with Honors 100 students (they even started doing our weekly 'highs and lows' exercise over email in the weeks we didn't have class) - Attended author talks for several of my favorite writers, including Leigh Bardugo and Madeline Miller - Went shopping at Goodwill on the Ave with one of my roommates in the middle of the school day - Started an internship that included teaching writing in elementary school classrooms - Dyed my hair the colors of fire - Took a workshop on letterpress printing - Opened a poetry reading by a professional writer with a poem of my own - Got very into embroidery as a hobby, especially with the onset of Covid - Went for so many walks all around my neighborhood - Had a lovely birthday Zoom surprise with friends all over the country |
Second Year Highlights
Here I have linked my entire series of artifacts and annotations from my first prose writing class at UW. This class, taught by professor David Shields, focused on brevity, and each of our weekly assignments spanned no more than a page. This class challenged my perceptions of fiction and the kinds of stories that can be told in very short spaces. My final portfolio `for this class was one of my favorite projects from the school year, and I have been using stories from it for literary magazine submissions and all kinds of applications ever since.
I always jump at opportunities for creative final projects (in case my penchant for creative writing isn't yet apparent). For my Gothic literature final, the option I chose was to write a story in the style of the Gothic about a current event. I chose the Covid-19 pandemic. This story made my professor cry - always a sign of accomplishment for a writer - and became another entry into my graduate school application portfolio.
My Honors professor for my Leadership, Democracy, and a More Thoughtful Public class started my 48 hour frenzy of writing by emailing our class an op-ed piece published by the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools proclaiming her intentions to abolish the district's advanced learning program, the same (admittedly problematic) program that had been my savior as a child. After a frenzied couple of days of writing and revision, my article was accepted almost immediately for publication in The Seattle Times and appeared in print a few days later. Though I knew my topic had the potential for controversy, I was proud of the personal and nuanced take I provided on this contentious issue - and the incredible community response I received.
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My Honors Photography professor had us keep a weekly photo journal of a favorite place, and I chose my karate school, a place where I've spent many of my evenings and weekends since becoming a student in 2008. I was proud of the way my photography skills and confidence improved over the course of the quarter, and the captions I gave to my photos in each individual entry. Feel free to explore and enjoy my collection of adorably violent children.
My experience as an Honors Peer Educator really spanned all three years of my college journey, but manifested most prominently in second year, when I spent fall quarter teaching my first section of Honors 100 students and spring quarter in a remote PE training seminar that I was newly able to attend after my study abroad program was cancelled due to Covid and I once again would be in residence in spring. Being a Peer Educator was transformative for me - probably why the experience shows up across my portfolio so many times!
Through my internship with Seattle Arts and Lectures, I was invited to open a reading for Utah State Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal. SAL has student readers open all of their lectures, but since I wasn't technically a participant in their Writers in the Schools program but rather a teaching assistant, I didn't expect to qualify. This experience reaffirmed my love of both sharing my writing and being in front of an audience. I didn't realize at the time of course, but this also was SAL's last live event before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, so momentous in another way too I suppose.
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I had been looking forward to studying abroad before even starting college, and the English department's Spring in London program was a major draw when I was committing to UW. I completed the entire process of preparation, including applications, acceptance, orientations... the only thing that needed to happen was getting on the plane. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic hit within a week of my departure, and to no one's surprise, the program was cancelled days later. While I mourn the loss of this college experience, I hold out hope that one day the world will stabilize and I will still able to visit London sometime in the future.