What specific experiences (honors or otherwise) in the past year have had the most impact on your academic and professional goals and trajectory?
There could not have been a more unexpected freshman year.
I was fortunate enough to find myself surrounded by a group of diverse, hardworking, compassionate individuals from the Honors program right from the Honors Retreat all the way through our first year of college. It was easier to discover a world of new experiences knowing that I was not alone and always had at least one person to find my way back to.
Extracurricular organizations such as Generation Action and URGE helped me find an outlet and community for activism and outreach, something which has always been incredibly important to me. We dove right into protests and rallies as the new school year began, and I was already seeing tangible change our efforts made in the state government, such as the removal of the tampon tax.
Before the pandemic turned our world upside down, I was working with my fellow freshman in HOSA's Public Health group event. As a team, we created a presentation on effective community-based solutions for the opioid epidemic, which hits close to home. However, before we got the opportunity to present, things hit the fan. From there, we all had to overcome a learning curve and remotely come together to still create an effective and cohesive live presentation for the competition. Our efforts were not in vain- we won first place at States and won third place at the International Leadership Conference.
As many freshman do, I joined a handful of clubs and orgs that really did interest me, but simply could not keep up with them all after a few months. So there were some that I had to let go of, but I hope that one year I might be able to return to them.
As the first semester was coming to an end, I grappled heavily with staying in my major. Something about the title 'Medical Sciences' did not encourage or inspire me. I had always envisioned myself studying a concentration of Biology and pairing it with Public Health, but those were not available options for me- or so it seemed. My uncertainty and unhappiness were spoiling all the experiences I was having with my medsci peers, so I decided to reach out. Long, complicated conversations with my Connections upperclassmen, my Medsci mentor, my wonderful program advisor, and my peers left me torn and with wildly conflating points of view. I could not seem to decide whether I should stay in medsci for the community, or switch to a biological sciences concentration to satisfy my educational goals.
At the end of the day, my end goal remained the same, as well as my career interests. I still want to be a physician and am on track to go to medical school, so perhaps the road I take to get there can be something wholly unique to me and tailored to what I desire. So, I am currently refusing to compromise and working towards a Dual Degree in Medical Sciences and Biology with a concentration in Cellular and Molecular Biology.
As this tumultuous and unprecedented school year draws to an end, I realize how important this foundation I have laid for myself is. I already know that a few years from now, me and my closest friends will find ourselves around a campfire at retreat with incoming Honors freshman reminiscing on how we met at this exact same spot four years ago. With a support system made of friends, faculty, and people in my career field, I cannot fathom how different my life would be without UHP being, somehow, at the center of it all.
There could not have been a more unexpected freshman year.
I was fortunate enough to find myself surrounded by a group of diverse, hardworking, compassionate individuals from the Honors program right from the Honors Retreat all the way through our first year of college. It was easier to discover a world of new experiences knowing that I was not alone and always had at least one person to find my way back to.
Extracurricular organizations such as Generation Action and URGE helped me find an outlet and community for activism and outreach, something which has always been incredibly important to me. We dove right into protests and rallies as the new school year began, and I was already seeing tangible change our efforts made in the state government, such as the removal of the tampon tax.
Before the pandemic turned our world upside down, I was working with my fellow freshman in HOSA's Public Health group event. As a team, we created a presentation on effective community-based solutions for the opioid epidemic, which hits close to home. However, before we got the opportunity to present, things hit the fan. From there, we all had to overcome a learning curve and remotely come together to still create an effective and cohesive live presentation for the competition. Our efforts were not in vain- we won first place at States and won third place at the International Leadership Conference.
As many freshman do, I joined a handful of clubs and orgs that really did interest me, but simply could not keep up with them all after a few months. So there were some that I had to let go of, but I hope that one year I might be able to return to them.
As the first semester was coming to an end, I grappled heavily with staying in my major. Something about the title 'Medical Sciences' did not encourage or inspire me. I had always envisioned myself studying a concentration of Biology and pairing it with Public Health, but those were not available options for me- or so it seemed. My uncertainty and unhappiness were spoiling all the experiences I was having with my medsci peers, so I decided to reach out. Long, complicated conversations with my Connections upperclassmen, my Medsci mentor, my wonderful program advisor, and my peers left me torn and with wildly conflating points of view. I could not seem to decide whether I should stay in medsci for the community, or switch to a biological sciences concentration to satisfy my educational goals.
At the end of the day, my end goal remained the same, as well as my career interests. I still want to be a physician and am on track to go to medical school, so perhaps the road I take to get there can be something wholly unique to me and tailored to what I desire. So, I am currently refusing to compromise and working towards a Dual Degree in Medical Sciences and Biology with a concentration in Cellular and Molecular Biology.
As this tumultuous and unprecedented school year draws to an end, I realize how important this foundation I have laid for myself is. I already know that a few years from now, me and my closest friends will find ourselves around a campfire at retreat with incoming Honors freshman reminiscing on how we met at this exact same spot four years ago. With a support system made of friends, faculty, and people in my career field, I cannot fathom how different my life would be without UHP being, somehow, at the center of it all.