Year in review
Year 1
In high school, I was your classic goody two-shoes straight A student whose life was dedicated to getting good grades and doing well in all my activities and athletics. Any volunteering to improve the world around me was honestly, to my dismay looking back on it now, was for selfish reasons. Will this look good on my college applications? Will I appear to be a more well-rounded individual for doing this? Will this make me feel better about myself? But all of my high achieving friends were also thinking this way, doing volunteering and taking leadership positions to get into the nation's top programs in their respective fields, so I didn’t feel that bad about it. In my head I was still helping the community around me, so it didn’t matter if my heart wasn’t dedicated to the cause.
Coming to college started a spark in me that I hope will never leave. By moving to a big city, I was thrown into the confined environment of campus, saturated with cultures, ideas, and passions that I had never been exposed to in my affluent, small town home. I began to think about the world differently, realizing my potential power to not only help out with improving the community around me, but through passion, spur change to transform lives. I cannot pinpoint a specific moment where I realized how silly my old way of thinking was. I think just by being exposed to people different than me, my perspectives became more open and my opinions on how to change the world started to change. Attending Leadershape in between semesters was the best thing I could have done to supplement this shift in my perspective. It ignited everything I was feelings and inspired me to keep challenging how I think about everything in order to be able to better evaluate the world around me to create the change I want to make in the world. As I think about problems, I feel I am doing a better job considering not how it affects me, but how by solving this problem, I can help others. I hesitate to write “how I can help others” because it is not even about that; it is about how others will be helped, not paying attention to the benefits I would receive by helping.
As I progress this year in my curriculum, I want to keep choosing projects like the one I chose for this summer that will help others. By doing so I will have practice looking at issues from others’ point of views and seeking solutions that benefit them. Through this next year, I want to be able to expand my mind to become a better culturally competent thinker and action maker. I don’t think there is ever an end to growing as a person in this sense, as well as in all areas of life. In that case, I am fully prepared to take my next hiking trip down this down this never-ending trail toward towards the beauty that we call a better world.
Year 2
What an insane year this has been. Fall semester was full of ups and downs, from the death of a close friend to getting my first co-op, to corona virus transforming our society to protests supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
The summer of 2019 was full of commuting 45 min each way to work with my mom and filling my weekends and nights with personal industrial design projects. One of which was a self designed experience. This was a great growing experience for me to learn how to think and design for people completely different than myself, with different needs and preferences. This helped to build my confidence a little about my skills as a designer. This is something I still am struggling with today. Through this project I was able to raise awareness about non visible medical issues, and I think that I got good response at the Global Citizen Scholar Showcase.
The fall was interesting. I lost one of my close friends and studio mates to overdose in the first week of school. To focus on the positives, I learned an appreciation for life and my friends, and it brought our entire program closer. Despite that, I will always miss Jackson and I am eternally grateful for our late night talks and shenanigans and the impact he had on my life. Shorty after, I landed my first co-op at a great company (on my birthday!). The semester was full of very different projects and it spurred my passion for sustainability. I joined the Sustainable Industrial Design Initiative and now have a leadership position for the summer. We are hoping to change the way we design and also help change the program to promote sustainable practices.
My first co-op was phenomenal. Allegion provided us a well rounded experience, and we got to do work that actually mattered for the future of the company. They kept us on working from home when COVID-19 became prevalent in Indiana, and tried to still provide us a great experience. I grew so much as a person, learning how to keep myself happy and entertained when not relying on other people. I took up running, training for a half marathon, which is now postponed, mountain biking, and cooking. I stretched myself to make friends in the area, and found myself hardly ever bored. I loved my experience and I'm excited to go back after their hiring freeze is lifted.
For the summer, I am doing classes from home in Michigan due to COVID-19. I find myself missing the independence I have been used to for so long. I also miss the culture of college, getting exposed to people of all perspectives. My opinions are different from my fairly vocal parents and I am struggling to feel heard in this household. Other than that, it is nice to be able to be with my family and pets and see my friends (from a distance) from home. The racism that is becoming prevalent in the media right now is saddening and maddening. I just wish people could care for their fellow man.
In terms of my future, I am looking forward to taking an honors seminar in the spring. I have a couple on my radar that I am interested in, but we will see what is offered. Oh, and I almost forgot! I am now a UHP Ambassador! I am super excited to represent this life changing organization.
Year 3
I think my word for the past year has been “intentional.” I strived to make consistent, intentional decisions to take me from where I was to where I am now—and this is something that I don’t want to end. As the year progressed, I tried to be more intentional with my friends, my family, my career, and my faith. I could not be prouder of the progress that I have made for myself this year.
In high school, my faith was strong. I felt confident and I felt that I was living boldly in Christ. But coming to college was really hard for me in that category of my life. I only lasted a semester until I felt very disconnected and lost. I was doing well in school, I had great friends, but something was missing. Even though the pandemic brought its own challenges, the pandemic brought me closer to God. Once I rekindled my relationship with Christ, the stress of the pandemic, school, co-op, friends, and family started to find its way on my life path. I was still stressed, definitely stressed, but as the months progressed, I felt that I was able to process my emotions better and make intentional decisions to take steps to improve my well-being and the world around me.
I struggle with not being in control and this was very hard to accept with the pandemic (and still is). A piece of Scripture that I have held dearly to my heart over the past six months has been James 4: 14-15: yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” Everything in my life, from my friends and family to where I’m taking my career, is now guided by God, or at least I try. I am not yet unconsciously and intuitively following God’s will, but I am trying to look to Him for guidance in all things I do. I am trying to take comfort in the fact that He has a plan for us here on Earth, and even if I may not understand it now, I will eventually.
I think I have made intentional decisions this year about where I want to take my career. I am extremely excited to have been chosen for UC’s first cohort of Next Innovation Scholars. I, along with three other students, will be part of Stanford’s University Innovation Fellows to help transform the way that UC does innovation. (Thank you Bria for the referral!) I think that I am finding myself lead toward innovation because it has such a huge opportunity to help others. I want to help others, and I am blessed to be on this track that will hopefully lead me closer to where I want to end up.
In order to continue my growth in my faith, and therefore my growth in every other aspect of my life, I know that I need to keep holding my peers accountable so they can continue to hold me accountable. It is very easy to get swept away by temptation and to stop making intentional decisions. I am not saying that I don’t want to have fun in life and have spontaneous adventures, but I think there is a way to have an intentional life that serves Christ and the world around us. This is a life I want to live.
Year 4
I am so proud of myself this past year. I worked my butt off—way too much. But I did it because I loved the work I was doing outside of school. I slaved over my work with the University Innovation Fellows, doing an average of 15 hours of work a week. On top of school and everything else, that was a lot for me. But I didn’t care—I loved it too much not to give it my all.
Burnout hit me very hard this year. I was getting sick constantly—a lack of sleep and a lack of time to relax left my body in a constant state of mild stress. Not enough to disturb me daily, but it would culminate to my body shutting down around once or twice a month. It was really tough for me because I am used to giving my all for everything I do, but suddenly I couldn’t do that anymore and continue to stay well. I hope that I was able to stop putting in so much into the commitments that weren’t as big of a priority for me. I have by no means perfected it, barely scratched the surface of burnout management, but I am trying and I am improving. As a type A person that loves the grind, this is really hard for me. But I know it is important, and I strive to get better at burnout and management of my priorities. I’m a little scared for this last year because as I continue to get out of school opportunities and consulting gigs in the fields I want to pursue, it will become increasingly hard for me to manage my time with the work I have to do to graduate and the things I’ve already committed to.
Despite being overworked and overwhelmed, I continued to grow in my faith and put all my stress on Christ. Since I was able to co-op in Cincinnati in the spring, I was finally able to stay long enough at a church to develop relationships and feel like I belong there. I’m actually sad to possibly leave Cincinnati for my next co-op and after I graduate. I have developed such a love for this city and these people, and I want to see and help do God’s work here. I am confident, though, that the Lord has a plan for me, and I will be able to serve Him wherever I go.
All of the design research, strategy, and innovation work I have done over the last year has really solidified how I want to serve God when I graduate. It is such an amazing field that deals directly with helping consumers. I want to use my talents to make change. I am so grateful for all the challenging work I have done over the past year with NEXT Innovation Scholars.