Year in Review - Junior Year
Prompt: In what way(s) did you personally grow this year? How did you demonstrate or rebuild the resilience needed to move forward? How will you utilize resources and your support network to hold yourself accountable in continuing this growth?
Wow. I just reread my year in review from last year, and it's funny because I remember how incredibly sad I was around this time last year. Being on coop two semesters in a row meant not seeing friends from class and having to make a dedicated effort to go outside. I worked remotely, so I'd sit upright in bed and do work. This meant that I let my personal hygiene escape me - there were days where I'd go 4+ days without showering, because of how incredibly depressed I was from realizing that I was going to be a worker bee for the rest of my life, once I graduate.
This past school year, I was able to enjoy life again. I met up with friends, went to class, met new people, etc. But I still feel like a part of me is empty. Unlike what I said in my year in review from last year, I still have not met up with a therapist, I didn't join any new organizations, but I have learned to love myself a little more. Having fun colored hair, wearing the things I want to wear, and going out with my friends all helped with that. Now that it's summer and I don't have forced interactions with my friends, I am still struggling with making efforts to hang out with my friends. So that is something I need to work on - I have planned a weekly movie night with my friend, and plan to start doing "family dinner nights" and invite many friends over for food.
Another thing I want to work on is dating myself. It might sound kind of silly but I think I need to be able to treat myself (and not through the usual way of shopping online) and being okay with being by myself. This means going out to parks, going window shopping, anything really as long as it isn't me sitting in my room all day or doing errands.
My parents have become increasingly aware of my struggles with mental health. It was so valuable to me that my dad finally acknowledged that I have depression - you don't know how crazy that is, given that Asian immigrant parents never seem to believe in mental health issues or LGBT rights, etc. My mom told me recently that I need to stop being so 真面目 (mah-jee-meh), which I think would be translated to "serious". Which at first I didn't understand - I literally showed my mom my going-out outfit that night and talked about drinking with friends. But then it made sense - I have high expectations for myself. Graduating college is not enough for me - I want to get a high paying job and move to another city. My career goals look like this: work for a couple years, pursue a PhD when I get bored of working, work for a couple more years, then retire to become a second grade teacher. I don't think I take enough time to congratulate myself for what I've accomplished so far. I only see the things I haven't accomplished - getting into an Ivy League school, getting a scholarship, getting more accolades and recognition in college. My mom also said some Japanese proverb that I can't remember that basically meant "you are meant to do the things you are meant to do". Maybe not getting into Harvard or UPenn was good for me because my mental health would have deteriorated more. Maybe I didn't get a scholarship because I already get free tuition through UC and because I have the opportunity to coop. Maybe I don't need more awards in college because people who really deserve them are getting them instead and I can feel satisfied working in my spaces on campus and helping people without the recognition.
I told my mom how I had these backup plans for my siblings and how I would want to support them in college. She said, "Why do you think so hard? You don't need to do all that." I didn't even tell her that I would want to support her and my dad once they retire. I think my mom wanted me to know that it's okay to not have the weight of the world on my shoulders.
My goal for the next year is honestly to let go of all these pressures and expectations for myself. I will always have a plan for my future but maybe I shouldn't stress about it so much - and be less 真面目. (This was hard to write haha, my eyes are currently tearing up.)
This past school year, I was able to enjoy life again. I met up with friends, went to class, met new people, etc. But I still feel like a part of me is empty. Unlike what I said in my year in review from last year, I still have not met up with a therapist, I didn't join any new organizations, but I have learned to love myself a little more. Having fun colored hair, wearing the things I want to wear, and going out with my friends all helped with that. Now that it's summer and I don't have forced interactions with my friends, I am still struggling with making efforts to hang out with my friends. So that is something I need to work on - I have planned a weekly movie night with my friend, and plan to start doing "family dinner nights" and invite many friends over for food.
Another thing I want to work on is dating myself. It might sound kind of silly but I think I need to be able to treat myself (and not through the usual way of shopping online) and being okay with being by myself. This means going out to parks, going window shopping, anything really as long as it isn't me sitting in my room all day or doing errands.
My parents have become increasingly aware of my struggles with mental health. It was so valuable to me that my dad finally acknowledged that I have depression - you don't know how crazy that is, given that Asian immigrant parents never seem to believe in mental health issues or LGBT rights, etc. My mom told me recently that I need to stop being so 真面目 (mah-jee-meh), which I think would be translated to "serious". Which at first I didn't understand - I literally showed my mom my going-out outfit that night and talked about drinking with friends. But then it made sense - I have high expectations for myself. Graduating college is not enough for me - I want to get a high paying job and move to another city. My career goals look like this: work for a couple years, pursue a PhD when I get bored of working, work for a couple more years, then retire to become a second grade teacher. I don't think I take enough time to congratulate myself for what I've accomplished so far. I only see the things I haven't accomplished - getting into an Ivy League school, getting a scholarship, getting more accolades and recognition in college. My mom also said some Japanese proverb that I can't remember that basically meant "you are meant to do the things you are meant to do". Maybe not getting into Harvard or UPenn was good for me because my mental health would have deteriorated more. Maybe I didn't get a scholarship because I already get free tuition through UC and because I have the opportunity to coop. Maybe I don't need more awards in college because people who really deserve them are getting them instead and I can feel satisfied working in my spaces on campus and helping people without the recognition.
I told my mom how I had these backup plans for my siblings and how I would want to support them in college. She said, "Why do you think so hard? You don't need to do all that." I didn't even tell her that I would want to support her and my dad once they retire. I think my mom wanted me to know that it's okay to not have the weight of the world on my shoulders.
My goal for the next year is honestly to let go of all these pressures and expectations for myself. I will always have a plan for my future but maybe I shouldn't stress about it so much - and be less 真面目. (This was hard to write haha, my eyes are currently tearing up.)
Year in Review - Pre-Junior Year
Prompt: In what way(s) did you personally grow this year? How did you demonstrate or rebuild the resilience needed to move forward during this time? How will you utilize resources and your support network to hold yourself accountable in continuing this growth?
This school year saw a lot of emotional changes for me. As someone who is a little more extroverted than introverted, not being able to hang out with friends has made my energy levels go down. I had episodes where I felt sadder than usual. It made me realize just how extroverted I was. Pre-pandemic, I didn’t really hang out with friends unless they invited me. I had thought I was more introverted because I usually felt comfortable staying at home, spending time by myself. After I hung out with friends, I would usually feel tired.
When I was trying to understand why my emotions were so precarious, I found that extroverts gain energy after being around other people, while introverts gain energy while being alone. I felt tired alone, I felt tired after hanging out with people. After some more thought and reflection, I realized that of course I would be physically tired after hanging out with people. But my tiredness being alone was an emotional tiredness and that it could only recharge after being with other people.
Although I have always been a reflective person, it’s usually more focused towards the actions I take, not necessarily who I am as a person. I need to remember that college is a time for finding who I am as a person, what my goals are, and how I can work to achieve that. My goal now is to work more on introspective reflection, rather than reactionary reflection. There are some things that I don’t love about myself, such as my disorganization or how I easily succumb to pressure and stress. I hope to work on that somehow, whether I learn to accept it or work towards not being that way.
How can I hold myself accountable? I have taken some baby steps toward this. I went to a few sessions at CAPS during one of my sad episodes. I joined Bearcat Support Network, where I made some great connections with great people, and can’t wait to continue meeting people through the organization. The next big step that I am working towards is looking for a therapist. It is intimidating and I am feeling more stressed the longer I put it off. But once I schedule my first appointment, I know I will feel more relief and get the help that I need. To hold myself accountable, I can let my friend know that I am looking for one before the start of the school year so that she can give me gentle reminders of my goal. One more reach goal is to find an organization not related to my major that I can be a part of. I know I benefit from being in a community where I can be social. My baby step towards this goal will be attending the org fair during Welcome Week and signing up for 3 orgs that interest me. Hopefully from that, I will be able to find something that sticks.
When I was trying to understand why my emotions were so precarious, I found that extroverts gain energy after being around other people, while introverts gain energy while being alone. I felt tired alone, I felt tired after hanging out with people. After some more thought and reflection, I realized that of course I would be physically tired after hanging out with people. But my tiredness being alone was an emotional tiredness and that it could only recharge after being with other people.
Although I have always been a reflective person, it’s usually more focused towards the actions I take, not necessarily who I am as a person. I need to remember that college is a time for finding who I am as a person, what my goals are, and how I can work to achieve that. My goal now is to work more on introspective reflection, rather than reactionary reflection. There are some things that I don’t love about myself, such as my disorganization or how I easily succumb to pressure and stress. I hope to work on that somehow, whether I learn to accept it or work towards not being that way.
How can I hold myself accountable? I have taken some baby steps toward this. I went to a few sessions at CAPS during one of my sad episodes. I joined Bearcat Support Network, where I made some great connections with great people, and can’t wait to continue meeting people through the organization. The next big step that I am working towards is looking for a therapist. It is intimidating and I am feeling more stressed the longer I put it off. But once I schedule my first appointment, I know I will feel more relief and get the help that I need. To hold myself accountable, I can let my friend know that I am looking for one before the start of the school year so that she can give me gentle reminders of my goal. One more reach goal is to find an organization not related to my major that I can be a part of. I know I benefit from being in a community where I can be social. My baby step towards this goal will be attending the org fair during Welcome Week and signing up for 3 orgs that interest me. Hopefully from that, I will be able to find something that sticks.
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.
