Mira Naidoo Honors 100 AJ October 6, 2013 Assignment 1

Im at the point of first week exhaustion where Im seriously considering answering this question with in a car, and leaving it at that. However, this is a time when I need to remind myself that not everyone finds me as funny as I think I am and that facetiousness isnt always endearing. If here is Seattle, then the Naidoo family took a long, continent-spanning journey before making their home of eight years in Shoreline. My parents, myself, and my sister were all born in South Africa, where we lived for four and a half years. The shadow of apartheid still coloured everyday life: racial communities were still extremely insular. This separation had fostered such a closeness within the Indian population that my mom and dad were initially very reluctant to leave the country. Even so, it was becoming hard to ignore the rising crimes, the irreparable damage of institutionalized racism, and the tensions that manifested in a country neither safe nor stable. Thus, we left and settled in New Zealand, spending two years there before the realization dawned that in a country of more sheep than people, opportunities are sometimes hard to come by. Our Antipodean adventure came to an end, and once again we packed up and moved, this time to Calgary, Canada. Another four and a half years of my life was spent here learning how to shovel snow, before a final relocation to just north of Seattle. It was here, after seven years of schooling and learning to spell without extraneous vowels, that I opened up the University of Washingtons online application, desperately hoping that Id be the academic equivalent of shes got a great personality! While the above mentioned journey did result in my arrival at the UW and the Honors community, it was mostly a physical odyssey that I had little to no say in. My first real moment of deciding where I was going to go was when I decided where to apply to colleges. For so many of my friends, the familiar campus , however, I applied to the University of Washington with the intention of getting to know it, making a home of my choice out of the red brick buildings, and letting it change me just as much as I hope to make a mark on it. To do so, I fully intend to make the most of the UWs myriad of opportunities in the way of research, campus involvement, and social activities. Ive done my research based on what interests me: human rights, pre-medicine, and social justice. However, these are interests Ive already cultivated. While at the UW, I hope to learn more about myself, just based off the sheer quantity of the experiences available to me, learning what I find new and interesting and letting that shape me and my future plans. These future plans have always had a nebulous outline in my head: some sort of biology degree, medical school, and so forth. But being at the UW, drawing closer to when these plans have to take on some definition, Ive become less and less certain of where I want to go. Ive never been this uncertain of how to get somewhere. Im trying not to get anxious about it, though. Ive been on longer journeys, and Ive come to realize that you always get where you need to go.

Assignment 1: Early Reflection