This is a drawing I made after my first quarter in college, having felt overwhelmed from all the new transitions. I had a hard time moving - dealing with a new “home” without my parents, learning how to take care of myself, and trying to find new friends. All this stress transferred over to my learning as well, where I was dealing with a lot of imposter syndrome (taking honors chemistry), and learning to work hard again around my reduced attention span (covid). This piece tried to capture the stress and hard work on my ipad, and my desire to push through and regain peace of mind and fun and creativity by making time for myself and drawing. I also had a desire to find passion in my major and learning (colors), by trying to push myself outside of the box and monotony of simply taking notes/doing homework frantically (black/white).
One of the most challenging periods of my college journey was being thrown into honors chemistry with a class of super super smart people. I remember feeling a lot of stress and imposter syndrome, and even was rethinking my major. This is an image from the first lab we did, and our group already had no clue what was going on - even though it was fun and interesting to see, the class had started extremely quickly. However, I was lucky to meet and become friends with a small group of classmates living in my dorm building, and got a hint of the importance of having friends in classes. While we bonded over how lost we were in class and none of us felt confident in our work, it was assuring to hear from other people and put our brains in collaboration to finish assignments.
My acceptance into the Bioengineering major was a big transition moment for me, and represented a lot of growth during my freshman year. I had chosen Chemical Engineering as my intended major when applying to UW, as the lab I was familiar with was part of the ChemE department. However, I knew that my passion for science had stemmed from biology, and that I wanted to pursue a career in the biological fields. I had consulted with my mentor at the time about this - where she had actually started off as a BioE major and transferred to ChemE. I took the time to do my own research, looking at the types of classes I would be taking (where ChemE was mainly unrelated to biology), and also hearing from others that the BioE department was harder to get into during placement. My research led me to list BioE as my first choice, and upon getting this acceptance letter, I felt like I had been academically validated, and that my decision making for myself was sound. I was glad to see that some of my hard work from the year eventually paid off, and that I would be able to continue exploring what I was interested in.
Along with the artifacts mentioned above, this period of time resulted in significant growth. As I mentioned in my learning statement, I had come from a community built up over 6 years, and was not used to meeting so many new people and having to rebuild my own new communities. I had few friends, almost no resources in my classes, and required lots of self growth before I would be able to find people that would help me grow. Trying to make new friends in classes was particularly stressful for me, and I actually isolated myself from others in lots of my classes to avoid awkward interactions. However, I quickly learned that the learning styles I picked up during COVID and senior year - mostly a lack of attention span and constant off-topic work - would not sustain me in college. I needed people to reference and do homework with, while still being able to have fun. I also learned how much I hated having to act lonely or try and talk to someone after a professor told us to turn and talk to each other. Additionally, while I grew much closer with my roommate, neither of us had other close friends we could share time with. I knew I wanted to meet various types of people throughout my college experience instead of staying safe with my one friend. This all spurred me to start pushing myself out of my comfort zone and through awkward situations for potential new communities.