Winter 2021
CHEM 237, HONORS 394, HSERV 482, P BIO 499
CHEM 237
I dreaded the quarter that I would have to take organic chemistry but that quarter finally came and I also happened to have one of the most difficult professors in the chemistry department. Nevertheless, I started my first o-chem class with a positive mindset. The lectures and discussion sections weren't enough for me to master the material so I did every textbook problem, downloaded random worksheets I found online, went to office hours, watched YouTube videos, and spent a lot of time playing around with my model kit. My desk often looked like the picture on the right and as I began to understand one concept after another, I realized that I genuinely enjoyed studying o-chem. Ultimately, all of this self-studying paid off because aside from the lowest exam score that was dropped, I received above a 90% on all three midterms! My performance in this class exceeded my expectations and I am proud of how much effort I put in to succeed. Now, I am determined to work just as hard and produce even better results in the remaining courses of the sequence.
HONORS 394
For this class, we close read a variety of texts in terms of racial performance and cross-racial interactions. My favorite assignment was actually the one I struggled with the most. For the midterm paper, our professor wanted us to be as analytical as possible and delve deeply into one of the texts we had read this quarter, which is a skill that has always been challenging for me. Although I knew I wanted to explore Traise Yamamoto's "An Apology to Althea Connor: Private Memory, Public Racialization, and Making a Language," I couldn't remember the last time I had this much trouble writing a paper. But by discussing ideas with my professor and doing a lot of rereading and rewriting, I produced one of the best academic papers I have ever written. I was happy to see that this was reflected in my professor's comments on the paper: "Excellent! This is an impressive piece of work. Your paper has many memorable sentences that demonstrate your great understanding of Yamamoto’s essay. I find your discussion of the essay sophisticated and your writing style mature." Overall, I came out of this class feeling much more confident in my analytical skills and I know this will serve me well in my upcoming coursework.
HSERV 482
I learned a lot about population health and the recent decline in U.S. health from this class. My favorite activities were the Community Outreach Exercises, as we got to work with our peers to educate a large audience about contributing factors to the increase in U.S. mortality. My first COE was an informational survey and I was shocked that we received 508 responses from over 20 universities across the U.S. For the second COE, we created a survey in a quiz format and educated participants about the questions they were interested in via creative graphics that we designed and posted on our Instagram page @PopHealthUW. These COEs taught me the importance of education in raising awareness about U.S. health.
