Learning Statment

How I Got Here

Welcome to my honors portfolio (a sliver of my college career). It isn't easy to put all my thoughts, feelings, and experiences into words, while I reflect on my last four years. I can say that much of my time at the University of Washington can be boiled down to me searching for what I wanted to study and pursue as a future career. One thing that helped me was working to keep an open mind to various opportunities and experiences. It took my first three years, but I finally landed on studying Public Health.

Coming into college, I had no clue what to expect from my classes and the fresh environment. I had an interest in health care but didn't know where exactly to take this interest to pursue it further. I decided early on the major in Environment and Occupational Health, a subset of public health. I quickly found that the high emphasis on research and sciences like chemistry and microbiology to solve health problems was not where my health interests lay.

I worked to stay open to different opportunities and paths that came my way. Some of my most influential experiences (in no particular order) include: researching in a toxicology lab, working as a student assistant for a UW Professor, studying art and history in Italy, working as a client services intern at a web development agency, being a camp counselor, planning a few auction fundraisers, working as a development coordinator at a non-profit and taking many different classes at UW. One theme I searched for within these experiences was how they could connect back to health, which is why I found my focus on public health.

I truly appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of public health, where research, law, policy, social sciences, communications, and much more can come together to promote the health and wellbeing of communities around the globe. Public health has allowed me to take bits and pieces on my favorite experiences and classes and pull them together to promote health.  As I move forward to graduation and a career, I hope to keep the same open-mindedness I had coming into college. To take a deeper look at my path throughout college please explore my portfolio!