Autumn 2019
This quarter felt like one of the longest so far in undergrad, but not because of the difficulty of courses. I vastly overestimated how much I would be able to do this quarter, and as a result I volunteered to do more than I was probably actually able. I thought that I would only be taking classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays this quarter, so I booked lots of weekend vacations for myself (NYC, Nashville, and Boulder), but on the first day of school I realized that stacking my classes like that was a lot in one day, so I dropped a Tues/Thurs class for a Mon/Weds one. In the end, I took EDUC 310 (Implementing Race, Cultural, Ethnic and Social Identity Development for Teaching in the Classroom), HONORS 210 C (Authoritarianism and its Appeal in Ancient Rome), and EDC&1 351 (Teaching as a Profession). I also served my final term as VPMD for Pi Phi, led my Honors 100 section as a Peer Educator, worked as an undergrad TA for cognitive psych, and continued to work on my thesis for Departmental Honors. I’ve also been working on applications for grad school this quarter, writing statements and taking the GRE.
At the beginning of the year I moved out of the Pi Phi house and into a live-out with 11 of my friends (Peeko, Llamas, Maret, Kimble, Alexandra, Ashley, Anna, Miranda, Phoebe, Carley, and Brooke). Getting moved in was rough, but once everything was settled it started to feel like home. After we got through our final recruitment with Pi Phi, most of the seniors went to Vegas for a few days. I was actually very sick throughout the trip, but I still managed to have a good time (mostly on the second day we were there). Post-Vegas I spent about a week getting myself moved all the way into Coco (our live-out), which hadn’t been done yet because we had to start recruitment on the same day we moved in, so all I really had was a bed for a few weeks, and then school started! My favorite class this quarter was definitely Teaching as a Profession, which was taught by Kimberly Mitchell. It was at 8:30 but it was totally worth it because Kimberly was an absolute joy. Most of the class was taught through student presentations and guest speakers, which was so much more useful than studying theory and reading books (we did that too, though). We all got hands-on experience in some way, and we were able to shape the class through our class-led discussions.
Some of my housemates and me during recruitment! (from left to right: Miranda, me, Phoebe, Maret, Peeko, Carley, Kimble)
All the girls from Pi Phi who went to Vegas! This was our second night out, and we went to OMNIA. They let us be VIP for free and we even got to be in the DJ booth with Party Favor for half the night!
This button takes you to my Peer Educator reflection from the end of my facilitation quarter this fall. I had an awesome time leading my section, but it was very different from what I expected, and it changed the way I think about leadership and group dynamics as I went through it. In the future, I will take these new considerations with me as I enter new leadership positions. Being a PE was truly a transformative experience, and one that I'm so grateful to have had!
My class about Ancient Rome was sort of a happy surprise, because it’s the one I had to switch into and also the class I had the least background knowledge about. I felt confused a lot of the time, but not in an unmanageable way. The professor, Dr. Michael Ritter, did a really good job of drawing a parallel between the stories we were reading and current life/politics, which made it a lot easier to make class contributions and feel like I was understanding the material. My class about identity in the classroom was kind of middle-of-the-road. It was interesting at points, but much of the class was just reviewing theory on identity development and watching videos. It still exposed me to a lot of new ideas about identity and helped me to understand how many different identities there are within any one person, and how they may cause different educational and life outcomes.
In my final quarter as VPMD, I was able to accomplish a lot of my original goals from the start of my term; I hosted a LinkedIn workshop, a financial workshop, and got the ball rolling on implementing Champions are Readers (CAR) at our chapter. I feel good about the state we are leaving the chapter in for the new exec team (a far cry from the start of our terms when we discovered that the previous exec had not fulfilled numerous campus requirements), but I’m still kind of sad to be leaving. The year has flown by in this position and I’ve honestly loved almost all of it. The ability to make the changes that you want to see within the chapter is so fulfilling and brings you closer to all of the members. Based on my love for this position, I have chosen to pursue a Master’s in Higher Education next year, assuming that I get into grad school, and I am also applying to work as a Leadership Development Consultant with Pi Phi as another option for post-grad.
This picture is from my girls' trip to Nashville. By far my favorite trip this quarter, and extra special since I've known these girls since elementary school!
Being a Peer Educator was awesome—this quarter of facilitating classes has been much better than last quarter when we were just planning everything out. For more on my experience as a PE, you can read my reflection (linked on this page) but suffice to say it was great. My experience as a TA this quarter was also much different than previous experiences I’ve had with the same position. Cognitive psych was taught by Dr. Adrian Andelin this quarter (my former TA for PSYCH 202), and this was his first quarter teaching the class, and also his first quarter using an undergrad TA. I didn’t really have to do much for him besides grade extra credit submissions and answer student questions if they had them, which was nice because I don’t think I could have done much more. This quarter was our final quarter of data collection in the Osterhout lab, so starting soon I will be analyzing data for my thesis! It still feels like a kind of insurmountable task to finish this project, but I’m pushing through and hopefully at the end of it all I’ll have something I’m proud of.
Applying to grad school was quite possibly the most stressful thing I’ve had to do since starting my undergrad career. I applied to Seattle U, UW, USC, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, North Carolina and Northwestern for their higher ed administration programs, so hopefully I will get in somewhere. My top choice would be Vandy (sounds just like applying to undergrad), but I would be happy at any of the schools, so I feel better about my applications this time around. I have technically completed both my major and my minor requirements now, so I just need to finish both Honors programs before graduation. This is awesome because it gives me a lot of flexibility in what classes I take for the next two quarters, so for winter I am taking Jon Herron’s class with Honors and Jondou Chen’s education class. I’ve heard AMAZING things about both, so I’m really excited to experience them myself. My current career aspirations are to work in admissions or advising for a university and I’m really excited about it. I actually want to continue going to school to learn about these things, and I feel like I’d be really good at either of them, so I’m optimistic to try that in the future. Overall, this quarter has been hectic and stressful but also rewarding and so fun. I’m so grateful that I got to do everything I wanted to this quarter, and it really showed me that when I care about something I’ll find time to do it. I’m looking forward to a more peaceful quarter in the winter, though! I’m ready to focus on finishing up my undergrad career and preparing for the future.
The image to the right is my score report from the GRE this quarter. It wasn't quite what I expected, but I'm very proud of my results considering that I relied only on my own resources to study for it. I asked everyone I knew to help tutor me in the math section, and I'm so thankful to everyone who took the time to help me, because I don't think I could have performed this well otherwise (it's been a LONG time since I took any math at school). Hopefully these scores will be good enough to help get me into grad school!