Hi! Welcome to my Honors Portfolio. These pages will document my four years in the Honors Program at UW and hopefully weave bits and pieces of experiences, people, ideas together as a sort of roadmap to my journey. I see the next four years as the beginning of a lifelong journey of learning and exploring. I will always be chasing the elusive horizon and strive to be the new best version of myself each day.
College in Three Acts: A learning statement
i. I am proud of the ways I’ve pushed myself beyond breaking points and still come out the other end okay. I’ve challenged myself to take classes that frighten me, ones that frighten my GPA. I have pushed myself to stretch the limits of how I view myself and eradicate preconceptions about myself. When I came into college, the only thing I knew for sure I was good at was writing. I never considered myself the type of person who could take a leadership role and yet I helped bring an Indigenous Health course to life. I studied abroad and let myself be changed for the better by my experience.I also never thought I’d find anyone as close to me as my high school best friends but after living with the same people for multiple years, I’ve learned I can. On the flip side, I didn’t think I could ever get homesick as my parents live just across the water but sometimes I still find myself missing them so much my heart aches. I’ve learned to live with this and to really appreciate the time I have with the people I love when they’re with me—to live fully in the present and to spend meaningful time together.
ii. I hope that upon viewing this portfolio, the people viewing it understand the importance of connection to resilience. In my portfolio, I plan to write candidly about my highs and lows in college—the times I’ve really struggled, the hardships I’ve undergone, and the ways in which the people around me have helped me start again. My proudest accomplishment from college is how much better I know myself and how at peace I feel with who that person is. I trust myself to realize my dreams and I trust myself to take good care of myself while doing so. I feel beyond fortunate to have had the opportunities to achieve things I never could have imagined doing at the beginning of college and to have had the support of so many incredible people while doing so. I know that without my community and several amazing mentors who trusted me when I was struggling to find my way, I wouldn’t have realized many of my goals.
iii. Ultimately, I was able to be resilient and try again because of the connections I made and because of the care so many people put into me. Vulnerability is difficult for me but I really believe that full authenticity is impossible without it. In this portfolio, I hope to highlight my moments of vulnerability so that new honors students can rest assured that success is possible after and strengthened by failure, that professors can know how important loving mentorship is to students and so that I can remind myself how far I’ve come in my journey to know who I really am. All of these groups of people represent new connections I’ll make without even knowing, connections that help each of us to be stronger and represent the invisible threads tying us all together as a larger Honors community.