My Husky Experience
If you had asked me what my Husky experience meant to me when I chose the University of Washington Seattle or at any other point during my four years at UW you would get many different answers. Now at the beginning of my last quarter as an undergraduate student at UW, I am happy to take the rare opportunity to reflect on the experiences over the last four years which have influenced my learning experience and my own personal growth.
As my college decision loomed during my senior year of high school, I decided that I wanted a college experience that would prepare me for the complexity of life after college. I wanted a school with experiences and limitless opportunities that mirror those throughout life, but with the resources that would allow me to push myself, safely fail, and continue to learn more the next day.
The last four years of learning, challenge, growth, and discovery have given me that college experience I desired when I picked UW and have prepared me more than I ever imagined for the complexity of life to come. As I navigated courses across topics of Orientalism, homelessness, machine learning, and social entrepreneurship I was exposed to how much there is always left to learn and found passions. Engaging in student governance I figured out how to navigate large institutions, finding my voice for advocacy. In meeting others, different from me and alike, I learned from others, finding myself and lasting friendships along the way. However, even more important to me than all of these positive outcomes are the challenges and struggles that made these accomplishments possible and taught me what it takes to thrive while experiencing the complexities and choices of life. I hope this portfolio will give you a realistic window into both sides of my UW journey and show its impact on my future journey as I embark on life after college. Let’s dive in!
As my college decision loomed during my senior year of high school, I decided that I wanted a college experience that would prepare me for the complexity of life after college. I wanted a school with experiences and limitless opportunities that mirror those throughout life, but with the resources that would allow me to push myself, safely fail, and continue to learn more the next day.
The last four years of learning, challenge, growth, and discovery have given me that college experience I desired when I picked UW and have prepared me more than I ever imagined for the complexity of life to come. As I navigated courses across topics of Orientalism, homelessness, machine learning, and social entrepreneurship I was exposed to how much there is always left to learn and found passions. Engaging in student governance I figured out how to navigate large institutions, finding my voice for advocacy. In meeting others, different from me and alike, I learned from others, finding myself and lasting friendships along the way. However, even more important to me than all of these positive outcomes are the challenges and struggles that made these accomplishments possible and taught me what it takes to thrive while experiencing the complexities and choices of life. I hope this portfolio will give you a realistic window into both sides of my UW journey and show its impact on my future journey as I embark on life after college. Let’s dive in!
Freshman Year: A Year of Opportunity
2015-2016
Civic EngagementWhere else would I be found first day of Dawg Daze my Freshman year, but volunteering with the ASUW Office of Government Relations to register voters on campus. Coming to UW's campus, civic engagement was already extremely important to me and I knew I wanted to engage in the advocacy process for the needs of our population. Freshman year I found the opportunities of serving in the ASUW's Legislative Steering Committee, ASUW Senate, lobbying legislators in Olympia, and serving on the Executive Board of the Residential Community Student Association (RCSA). Each of these opportunities gave me the chance to learn how successful student advocacy works, the challenges students at UW face, and how much I enjoy working in these spaces. But far more importantly, these experiences have shown me how much I still had to learn about systems of power and the needs of student populations that my privilege had hidden from me. Reflecting on this today, I recognize that I still have much to learn about the experiences and needs of others, but at that time, I was just awakening to that very idea.
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Honors 394: Islam and Muslims In Western ContextsAs I was just beginning to realize how much I had to learn about power and privilege from my activities in civic engagement, Karam Dana's course on Orientalism and the racialization of Islam and Muslims in the West provided me with an academic vocabulary and foundation to build my own ideas upon. This class gave me space to engage openly with other students on current and past racial politics, systematic inequities, and my own privilege that I had never had before. Through these discussions and much introspection, I had a focus for my passion of civic engagement, empowering the voices of communities with less historical access than myself in order to advocate for equitable resources, representation, and access for all students pursuing an education on UW's Seattle campus.
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Sophomore Year: Finding My Voice
2016-2017
Residential Community Student AssociationOne of the first places I applied my growingly focused advocacy work was on the Executive Board of RCSA, UW Seattle's on-campus resident student government. When I joined, it quickly became apparent to me that there was an opportunity to give more effective student voice in Housing and Food Services’ (HFS) rates and budgeting process. Students did not feel they had voice in a process that affects their access to housing on UW Seattle's campus. By collaborating with my Board and HFS' Executive Director, RCSA created the HFS Budget Advisory Committee (BAC), which works to educate representative students from across UW about the financial complexities of a large auxiliary department like HFS. These educated students then have context to evaluate a budgeting proposal and serve as peer resources for other students on topics of HFS pricing, rate increases, and operations. I feel that the HFS BAC allows students a necessary avenue to ensure they have representation in ensuring housing accessibility at UW Seattle.
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Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs: lettuceshareEmily Pahnke's course, "Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs" exposed me to the concept of social entrepreneurship, where an entrepreneur sets out to not just create a financially sustainable venture, but one that also creates a sustainable social impact. Up to this point during my time at UW, my passion for civic engagement and social impact had pushed aside my passion for entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship allowed me to finally combine all 3 of these passions. In the course we came up with the idea of lettuceshare, a peer to peer food sharing app to reduce food waste on college campuses while also helping support the nutrition access of students in need.
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Junior Year: Challenge and Impact on a Larger Scale
2017-2018
ASUW Director of Internal PolicyDuring my Junior year, I stepped up to a higher level of student advocacy served on the ASUW Board of Directors as the Director of Internal Policy. I made it my priority to lead comprehensive outreach to communities around UW and engagement within the Association to inform equity, access, and transparency increasing reforms of the ASUW Elections system, Student Senate outreach, the Legislative Agenda creation process, governing documents, and historical record management systems. These reforms drive institutional change that I believe will empower the voices of communities that have historically lacked access to student government institutions. The change these communities will accomplish with this new access is far more important and impactful than any change I could ever directly make. I am extremely thankful to have had the opportunity to empower other communities and to have learned how to navigate complex institutional reform in the process.
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ECON 396: Economics Honors IntroductionPutting this class here might seem like a plug to tell people that I did Economics Departmental Honors and Interdisciplinary honors, but its not. In fact, I dropped Economics Honors the fall of my senior year. While this class presented an extremely informative overview of research topics in Economics, it taught me a far more important lesson in life. That lesson is that it is okay to deviate from a defined path a success if it isn't right for you, even if you can force yourself to persevere successfully. Until this point, I truly couldn't say no to a "good" opportunity, but I learned how to become selective and be ok choosing my own path. Learning that lesson has allowed me to move forward on my own path and find focus in ventures I truly enjoy.
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Senior Year: Enjoying the Last of My Husky Experience
impacTAs a part of the Entrepreneurship minor's Creating a Company Class and a part of a diverse and driven team, I have worked to create impacT! We are a custom apparel company supporting educational equity in the Pacific Northwest. Every piece of apparel impacT sells is made by a vocational skills and arts program for homeless youth and we give supplies to Seattle students in need with every sale! Years on from lettuceshare, the social entrepreneurship bug is still strong! Check us out at apparelforequity.com
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Pipeline TutoringAs impacT's mission might imply, educational equity has continued to grow as a cause that is dear to my heart. During my last two quarters at UW, I have chosen to spend three hours a week tutoring a fourth grade class in ELA and writing. It is often the most challenging part of my week, but also the most rewarding.
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Life After UW
2019 Onward
MicrosoftAfter interning at Microsoft during the Summer of 2018, I have decided to return in the Fall of 2019 as a Full Time Employee in the ACE Marketing Rotation program. After coming to UW to find a school with limitless opportunities and resources that would allow me to push myself and continually learn, I am excited to have found a great next step at Microsoft! Microsoft values the social impact I highly value and empowers its employees to find opportunities for positive change.
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Continued Passions
My Husky Experience has taught me so much about my own passions of civic engagement and social entrepreneurship. I feel that I have found myself at UW and have learned what positive social change I can contribute to when I embrace these passions. I plan to continue these for the rest of my life and I will forever be a Husky!