Year in Review - Sophomore Year
Prompt: What is your definition of a global citizen scholar? Using specific examples, how have you made progress toward becoming one this year? Discuss how this connects to your academic and professional goals and how the progress you have made this year shapes the goals you have for next year.
A global citizen scholar is someone who uses learning not just to become better themselves, but to make an impact on others through that mission to learn. They resist being a bubble and having a limited view of the world.
Academically, I had a professor this semester who was not very good at giving my lectures. I found myself not understanding most of the material he was teaching. Instead of complaining about how he was a bad professor, I read and learned the material myself. There was one homework that was heavily based on a lecture that I had watched YouTube videos and read about on my own. My friends were asking me how to finish the homework, so I helped them by explaining the lecture. When I saw that other students in my class were posting questions on our discussion board about the topics, I decided to make a video about the lecture slides, without giving homework answers. I posted this to the discussion board and many students reached out and thanked me for making the video. Even the professor thanked me. I wasn’t expecting any of this; I just wanted to help others using the information I learned. I think this is a good example of what makes a global citizen scholar.
Professionally, I experienced my first co-op rotation, working as a Security Operations Center Analyst. I had a great time learning a lot about cybersecurity, which I was interested in considering it is something that if forgotten, can have very bad consequences to the privacy of individuals and companies. Even though I enjoyed this co-op rotation, I learned that cybersecurity is not one of my interests that I would like to dedicate my career too. However, I did return from it with interesting podcasts and news sites to browse through occasionally since everyone can benefit from being more cyber aware. Not only should we try to diversify the people we surround ourselves with, we should also diversify the information that we listen and gather.
In these two spaces, I have gained a strong foundation in the two UHP competencies of leadership and research. My goal to become a global citizen scholar means that I should also work towards the community engagement, creativity, and global studies aspects of the UHP competencies. Now that I am going back into my second term as a co-op, I will be able to help newer co-op students adjust to remote work life, especially in this interesting situation Covid-19 put us in. I want to grow my leadership skills by helping them and also in my roles as vice president of ACM, secretary of ACM-W, and logistics organizer for the RevolutionUC hackathon. An academic goal for the next year is to do more leetcode problems. Leetcode is a series of common technical interview tests that require a deep knowledge of computer science foundations. Not only will this enhance my knowledge, it will prepare me when I apply to my next co-op, as I expect to encounter technical interviews.
Next school year will be a challenge for me as I face harder classes, added responsibilities with student orgs, and prepare for applying to co-ops in a world affected by Covid-19. However, I expect to come out next year even more stronger and knowledgeable.
Academically, I had a professor this semester who was not very good at giving my lectures. I found myself not understanding most of the material he was teaching. Instead of complaining about how he was a bad professor, I read and learned the material myself. There was one homework that was heavily based on a lecture that I had watched YouTube videos and read about on my own. My friends were asking me how to finish the homework, so I helped them by explaining the lecture. When I saw that other students in my class were posting questions on our discussion board about the topics, I decided to make a video about the lecture slides, without giving homework answers. I posted this to the discussion board and many students reached out and thanked me for making the video. Even the professor thanked me. I wasn’t expecting any of this; I just wanted to help others using the information I learned. I think this is a good example of what makes a global citizen scholar.
Professionally, I experienced my first co-op rotation, working as a Security Operations Center Analyst. I had a great time learning a lot about cybersecurity, which I was interested in considering it is something that if forgotten, can have very bad consequences to the privacy of individuals and companies. Even though I enjoyed this co-op rotation, I learned that cybersecurity is not one of my interests that I would like to dedicate my career too. However, I did return from it with interesting podcasts and news sites to browse through occasionally since everyone can benefit from being more cyber aware. Not only should we try to diversify the people we surround ourselves with, we should also diversify the information that we listen and gather.
In these two spaces, I have gained a strong foundation in the two UHP competencies of leadership and research. My goal to become a global citizen scholar means that I should also work towards the community engagement, creativity, and global studies aspects of the UHP competencies. Now that I am going back into my second term as a co-op, I will be able to help newer co-op students adjust to remote work life, especially in this interesting situation Covid-19 put us in. I want to grow my leadership skills by helping them and also in my roles as vice president of ACM, secretary of ACM-W, and logistics organizer for the RevolutionUC hackathon. An academic goal for the next year is to do more leetcode problems. Leetcode is a series of common technical interview tests that require a deep knowledge of computer science foundations. Not only will this enhance my knowledge, it will prepare me when I apply to my next co-op, as I expect to encounter technical interviews.
Next school year will be a challenge for me as I face harder classes, added responsibilities with student orgs, and prepare for applying to co-ops in a world affected by Covid-19. However, I expect to come out next year even more stronger and knowledgeable.
Year in Review - Freshman Year
Prompt: What specific experiences (honors or not) in the past year have had the most impact on your personal and professional trajectory? Articulate specific personal and/or professional goals for the next year.
Because I am a transition student, I have not had the chance to do any honors experiences yet. However, there are many experiences I have had this past year that have changed or impacted my thinking. Two of these are attending the WeCode conference at Harvard and my academic struggles this past year.
I attended a conference for women attending college for CS or other technology-related majors. In CS, the female to male ratio is very sad. It is approximated that women only earn 18% of computer science bachelor’s degrees in the US. I see this reflected in my CS classes at UC as well. This gave me a chance to see other women who are as motivated as me in studying computer science and also listen to professional women in the field speak on their experiences. I attended some great workshops for resume building and learning about security flaws. The most important thing I gained from attending was building relationships with the other people who attended the conference from UC. Our group had women from all years and from different majors. I realized that I should take advantage of all the things on campus related to my major. Some of the 5th years of my group had been heavily involved in ACM-W (the CS club for women) and WIT (Women in Technology). I could have met and connected with them through those clubs. Because of this experience, I have made a promise to myself that I would get more involved my next school semester.
My second “experience” is my academic struggles. Although I had a good start my first semester, earning a 3.98, my second semester did not go so well. I fell behind in two of my core classes, Chemistry 2 and Calculus 2. The content got harder and my study habits did not change to accommodate the change in difficulty. This led to me getting bad grades on my first few midterms. Once I realized that half the semester had gone by, I started getting anxious about the state of my grades. Because both classes were 4 semester hours each, I realized that these classes would have a big impact on my GPA. I knew I had to change something. So I stopped wasting time and made sure to sit down and study. I stopped passively taking notes in class and tried to absorb the information more. In Chemistry, the lecturer would go fast so I switched from handwritten notes to typed notes. This also made it easier to copy and paste figures from the powerpoint into my notes. In Calculus, I printed off practice problems and solved them multiple times. The change helped me get a 100 on the 3rd Chem 2 midterm. I did not do as well in Calculus 2, but I was still able to pass with a C+. Although this did drop my GPA, I was able to end with a 3.72 cumulative. However, the immense amount of stress I felt was not good for my mental health. I ended up shunning my friends and gave in to giving myself breaks because I felt like I couldn’t continue studying. I would calculate what test scores I would need to get a certain grade and calculated my supposed cumulative GPA. Although this gave me the motivation to study, it also made me very anxious because I didn’t want to fail a class. Because of this, I want to make sure that in following semesters, I put in effort in at the beginning of the semester so I don’t fall behind and can rest easy the rest of the semester. It also made me realize that I need to have ways to improve my mental health when I feel low.
I attended a conference for women attending college for CS or other technology-related majors. In CS, the female to male ratio is very sad. It is approximated that women only earn 18% of computer science bachelor’s degrees in the US. I see this reflected in my CS classes at UC as well. This gave me a chance to see other women who are as motivated as me in studying computer science and also listen to professional women in the field speak on their experiences. I attended some great workshops for resume building and learning about security flaws. The most important thing I gained from attending was building relationships with the other people who attended the conference from UC. Our group had women from all years and from different majors. I realized that I should take advantage of all the things on campus related to my major. Some of the 5th years of my group had been heavily involved in ACM-W (the CS club for women) and WIT (Women in Technology). I could have met and connected with them through those clubs. Because of this experience, I have made a promise to myself that I would get more involved my next school semester.
My second “experience” is my academic struggles. Although I had a good start my first semester, earning a 3.98, my second semester did not go so well. I fell behind in two of my core classes, Chemistry 2 and Calculus 2. The content got harder and my study habits did not change to accommodate the change in difficulty. This led to me getting bad grades on my first few midterms. Once I realized that half the semester had gone by, I started getting anxious about the state of my grades. Because both classes were 4 semester hours each, I realized that these classes would have a big impact on my GPA. I knew I had to change something. So I stopped wasting time and made sure to sit down and study. I stopped passively taking notes in class and tried to absorb the information more. In Chemistry, the lecturer would go fast so I switched from handwritten notes to typed notes. This also made it easier to copy and paste figures from the powerpoint into my notes. In Calculus, I printed off practice problems and solved them multiple times. The change helped me get a 100 on the 3rd Chem 2 midterm. I did not do as well in Calculus 2, but I was still able to pass with a C+. Although this did drop my GPA, I was able to end with a 3.72 cumulative. However, the immense amount of stress I felt was not good for my mental health. I ended up shunning my friends and gave in to giving myself breaks because I felt like I couldn’t continue studying. I would calculate what test scores I would need to get a certain grade and calculated my supposed cumulative GPA. Although this gave me the motivation to study, it also made me very anxious because I didn’t want to fail a class. Because of this, I want to make sure that in following semesters, I put in effort in at the beginning of the semester so I don’t fall behind and can rest easy the rest of the semester. It also made me realize that I need to have ways to improve my mental health when I feel low.