Honors 397 Peer Educator Prep Class

GoPost #1:
According to Deresiewicz, moral imagination refers to the "capacity to
imagine new ways to live your life". From the perspective of a college
student, I interpret this as the ability to script your own path at college,
depending upon your own inclinations and skillsets and independent of
peoples' perspectives and society's stereotypes. I strongly believe that this
ability to stand by your own decisions is very important and impactful,
especially because college lays the foundations for many years in the future.
Even though it may be argued that people can mold their careers, I believe
that it is important to instill from the very beginning a sense of
independence, self-confidence and freedom in people to make their own
choices.
In my opinion, the qualities of moral imagination and courage cannot
really be taught to an individual. It is a manifestation of every person's
innate characteristic and own perspectives. On a similar note, I do think
though that these qualities can be emphasized upon from the very
beginning. Even though there may be no direct correlation between an
individual's experiences and teachings with their decisions and moral
courage, individuals could be advised to follow their own paths and engage
in their own decisions. I strongly believe that not every subject is for
everyone, but every subject is for at least someone.
To me, the main hindrance between what people desire and the
decisions that they make, is people's stereotypes and the possible
implications that people envision society will harbor. I feel that it is
important to emphasize that in such cases, the self is more important than
the whole (society) and it is more important that everyone make decisions to
suit their own abilities and skillsets. I really enjoyed the reference to
"resume virtues" and "eulogy virtues" made by Brooks because I feel that it
is important that we constantly lay emphasis on personality-building
experiences rather than on superficial, resume-building activities.
College is a time to explore new avenues and take advantage of every
opportunity presented to you. It is honestly the only time wherein you can
focus on only yourself and not on other people or responsibilities. However,
on the flip side, that entails us making decisions on what activities to engage
ourselves in and what activities we need to push to one side. These
decisions lay the foundations for our future and I believe that these decisions
are what makes people who they are.
GoPost #2:

For my mini-teach, I taught my peers in my working group, the perfect

way to make friends in college. I think what really worked for me was to
taking into account the type of students that I was "teaching". Since
everyone in my working group was an underclassman, I think that they were
all able to relate to the personal experiences and methods that I adopted
during my teach which made what I was saying more personal and relatable
to them. If I had to improve the overall experience, I would provide more
emphasis on different forms of learning and make the teach more interactive
rather than a 'lecture' similar format because I feel that that would allow my
peers to be more engaged and as if they were part of the entire experience
rather than it being more instructive. From my peers, I think that they all did
a really great job teaching us their various passions and especially engaging
us, allowing us to feel more involved in the entire teaching exercise.
GoPost #3:
As I read through the list of high impact practices, I found a striking
semblance between my experience at UW in the past two and a half quarters
and the aspects that they list as significant and impactful. It was really
astonishing to me that UW provides us with so many opportunities to engage
in what they refer to as "high-impact". So far, I feel that I have in some way
engaged in 9 out of the 10 practices in some way or the other. The one
practice that I did not engage in, is the Capstone project, but that is
something that I will definitely do as I progress towards my junior and senior
years at the UW.
For me personally, the one that really stands out to be as high-impact
is engaging in undergraduate research. I have only engaged in this activity
for the past week and a half, but I already see a massive impact on my
knowledge base and understanding of computational practices. I believe
that engaging this form of group activity and interacting with professors and
graduate students who are already well versed in the fields that I am
interested in has helped me to solidify and expand my academic knowledge
pertaining to that area. They have also worked as a mentor and guide to me
personally, helping me ease into what is traditionally perceived as a really
technical and broad field.
The second high impact practice that I have immensely enjoyed
engaging and which has helped me to broaden my perspective is service and
community-based learning. I am currently engaging in service learning for
my Honors English class, teaching underserved elementary students English,
Math and Science. I find it particularly stimulating how I have the ability to
have such a large impact on my community as a college freshman. These
young students really look up to me and I find it immensely gratifying to see
the impact and importance that I hold in their lives.

Pertaining to the other high-impact components, I also find

collaborative assignments and projects really fun and engaging as I feel that
it is a great way to get to know your peers on a more personal basis.
Throughout the first year of college, I have greatly enjoyed activities
pertaining to interacting and sharing personal stories and experiences with
others and hearing their perspectives on your opinions because I find that
that is one of the best ways to get to know people better and as always I love
interacting with people!

GoPost #4:
Unfortunately, I was not able to make it to class this week because I
had another engagement at the exact same time that I could not reschedule.
Resultantly, I had to work around this time conflict and tried my level best to
contribute towards our group presentation by preparing the notes and
content for my section of the presentation, which was subsequently
presented by someone else.
Even though I did not have the opportunity to completely experience
the group teach, I think that I did gain some valuable insights. First of all, the
entire process of putting the content together, made me understand the
honors program curriculum much better - there are so many aspects and
guidelines to the Honors Program that I did not know about before actually
creating the slides! This exercise definitely did make me realize that I need to
spend some time familiarizing myself with these "rules" per say because I
am sure that these questions will definitely crop up during my Honors 100
teaches. Additionally, the process of thinking about an activity and how to
engage the audience was an aspect that I had not thought about earlier nor
had paid too much emphasis on. However, from reading people's reflections
as well as going through this course in the past few weeks, I have definitely
realized that this is one of the hardest and most important aspects that I
have to take into account while making my own lesson plans.
Reflecting back, I think that during the planning stages of my group
stage, I put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that I was able to convey the
"rules" and guidelines that govern each aspect of the Honors curriculum.
Even though this is important, I think it is more valuable I spend more time
on planning activity that emphasize on the "WHY" of the each activity and
really drill into why the Honors Curriculum is the way that it is. I personally
believe that activities focusing on these aspects would be much more
valuable that lecture style teaches focusing on the "WHAT" of the Honors
Curriculum.

GoPost #5:
I had a great time on the retreat - just what I needed in the midst of all
my midterm haha! It was great place to relax and I also loved getting to
know everyone so much better during our night conversations. About my
leadership style, I got a driver which I think closely resembles the type of
person that I am. I am a very solution oriented person and constantly work
towards "getting the job done". However, I think that it was important for
me to realize (because I did not think about this earlier) the implications of
my relatively quick decision-making skills on my fellow peers, and in the fall,
the students in my Honors 100 class. From these sort of discussions,
leadership exercises and self-reflection, I realized that in the fall, it is
paramount that I pay attention to the discussions and feedback that I receive
from my students and not just check stuff off from my lesson plans.

Honors PE Profile:
HEYY EVERYONE! I'm Mitali and I'm a sophomore majoring in Computer
Science with a possible minor in Entrepreneurship and maybe something
Psychology related(?) - as you see, I'm still figuring stuff out at UW, so no
worries there, we're all in the same boat! I am from Cupertino, CA (Bay Area
woop woop) and I love spending my non-existent free time watching movies,
exploring Seattle on my own and gorging on delicious Mexican food
(guac/avocado being my breakfast, lunch and dinner).
As a complete CS nerd, I love programming so if you are by any weird
chance really into programming and application development, be sure to hit
me up because I would love to spend hours debugging code together haha.
I'm also really involved in the College of Engineering as a Research Assistant
in the UW CSE UbiComp Lab, VP of Community Outreach for UW Society of
Women Engineers and a member of College of Enginering Student Advisory
Council. Unfortunately, this kinda turned into an interview rant about what
I'm involved in at UW, but basically what I'm trying to say is that I LOVEEE
Engineering and CSE, so if that's your jam be sure to hit me up so we can
geek out together!!
Finally, Honors has definitely been my most valuable and cherished
experience here at UW. It has allowed me to meet so many diverse and
individualistic people, some of whom are my best friends. Honors is a great
community, where everyone including the faculty and advisers actually care
about you, so make sure to take advantage of that! I am so excited to share
with you all the amazing community that Honors is while providing you with
the weekly insider's guide to surviving freshman year.

I can't wait to meet you all - next year is going to be AWESOME!