Realistically, I came to college angry. I was riding off the national frustrations and grief of the COVID-19 pandemic and had spent my senior year pouring myself into learning more about systemic issues and the hard history of the US. I was shocked by how little I knew, how privileged I am, and how unstable the world felt at the time. I needed to learn more about everything that was going on. I needed to develop the vocabulary to make sense of the things I was not comfortable with. It was this goal that guided the majority of my course work and my choice to study Public Health-Global Health.
Another guiding force in my coursework has been my need to be interdisciplinary, which coincidentally tied in well with my previous conviction. I love to contextualize a topic using a range of perspectives. I enjoy looking at data and reading research while also learning about local art and writing about the same phenomenon. My focus on interdisciplinary learning has helped me in my learning about social justice and pursuit to better understand systemic issues and health disparities. As it turns out, the history and current context of systemic discrimination in the United States is incredibly nuanced. It both operates on a global scale and is ingrained in our individual subconsciouses. I think my most valuable skill from my coursework at UW, in part thanks to the interdisciplinary honors program, is the ability to bring many sources together to think critically about a topic. And hopefully to take great care of the nuance and humanity in every issue. As I near graduation, I believe that this skill is core to effective, ethical, public health practice because well-strategized solutions need to reflect the people affected.
In the making of this portfolio, I kept coming back to a Ted Talk I had watched in a class recently where researcher Brené Brown talks about the role of vulnerability in our ability to thrive. Brown emphasizes that vulnerability is not weakness—it is the birthplace of courage, growth, and connection. Learning to embrace that vulnerability, to sit with the uncertainty, and to recognize that vulnerability is an essential step to growth has been one of the most important lessons of my college experience. With this idea in mind, my portfolio is divided into four sections: The Art of Reflection, Thinking with Writing, Influential Texts, and Outside of Class. Each page is a collection of my learning processes and key takeaways from my college experiences. Bolded in pink are moments of vulnerability.
The Ted Talk for Reference: