Year Two Spring

This Spring quarter has been really rewarding and I really enjoyed my involvement in a lot of extracurricular activities, even while wearing my ankle boot for most of it.

One of the most memorable parts of the quarter has been finishing my internship with The Math Agency through UW's CELE UCBI program. I started this internship last Winter quarter and completing it has been bittersweet. I loved spending time with the elementary schoolers at Stevenson and West Woodland, and I saw a lot of growth in my classroom management skills. This internship ended with the Spring CELEbration, an annual presentation night featuring the UW's CELE Center programs. I am very grateful for this opportunity and this experience has helped me to realize that education may be a path I want to pursue.

This quarter I also continued and completed the organic chemistry lecture and lab classes with CHEM 239 and 252. These classes were a bit challenging and, although I generally liked my professor and the content, the way the exams were set up were perplexing to me. We had 3 exams and 1 final, which is standard, but each exam also had a retake taken a week later, in which we could redo 3/7 exam questions (not the exact questions, but ones similar in content). I felt this was a very fair way to handle retakes and regrades and I appreciated my professor's efforts to give us chances to improve on areas of growth. It did mean, however, that we had 7 separate "exams" to study for over the course of the 10-week quarter, which made it slightly challenging to balance my workload. In general, I was grateful for the learning opportunities, was able to practice managing a variety of responsibilities, and was very relieved to complete the organic chemistry series.

​I also took an Honors course on pain. For such a general subject, I was not sure what to expect, but I was very intrigued and I felt as though many of the topics connected deeply to my Bioethics studies. This class was taught by two doctors who teach at UW's medical school and they brought in many various guest speakers to share their perspectives on different types of and different lenses through which to view pain. I also got to take this class with my roommate and friend, and we enjoyed studying the readings together.

On a more personal note, I also had many visitors. My dad, best friend (Kanoe), and boyfriend (Nick) all visited on separate weekends and I had a lot of fun showing them around UW and Seattle. Some of my favorite memories were feeding squirrels with my dad, giving Kanoe the best chai she has ever had, and going to Woodland Park Zoo with Nick.

Overall, I feel this was a very busy quarter. I am really looking forward to my summer at home and my internship at Veterinary Specialty Group as I am hopeful that this will give me more insight into if I want to pursue veterinary medicine as a career.