welcome to my honors portfolio!

Saya's Honors Portfolio

http://sayamadeaportfolio.neocities.org

Learning Statement

My time at UW has been, to put it diplomatically, varied and complex. To put it less diplomatically, my experience was often messy, contradictory, and overwhelming in just the sheer amount of stuff I was doing. However, as I reflected back on my journey, three throughlines emerged.

Redefining Success

I came to UW a 4.0 student, and I stayed one for a surprising number of quarters. To say I was a perfectionist is a gross understatement. The idea of anything less than a perfect grade, a perfect transcript was unacceptable. Eventually, this neuroticism began to take its toll on me. I was sleep deprived, constantly stressed, and unhappy most of the time. Still, my grades, at least, were excellent.

A number of experiences in the latter half of my time at UW prompted me to rethink this attitude towards success. I began reflecting on what is important to me and what I need to be able to achieve my goals (spoiler: a perfect GPA is not one of those things). This is still a work in progress! I'm continuing to (un)learn what "success" looks and feels like, especially as I get ready to leave academia.

Embracing Discomfort

When I first began to apply to universities, I had grand, vague plans of moving somewhere far away and beginning a whole new life. This vision of my future, like so many other things, was brutally squashed by the pandemic. Over the course of my senior year of high school, my anxieties swelled, and the idea of going out into the world alone felt more and more impossible. I couldn't imagine leaving my comfort zone, which over the course of the pandemic had shrunk to the confines of my parents' home. At times, it got as small as our living room couch. Torn between the knowledge that I was letting my life pass me by and the stomach-churning nausea I felt whenever I so much as thought about leaving home, I decided I would go to UW. This felt like a cop-out at the time. College was supposed to be a time of new experiences and forging your new identity as an adult–and here I was, going to school not 45 minutes away from the neighborhood I had lived in my entire life.

Even at UW, my difficulties persisted. Speaking to new people, going to unfamiliar places, doing things that I had never done before–these all continued to be major sources of stress. After spending much of freshman year in self-imposed isolation, I decided that something needed to change. I began taking small, incremental steps to challenge myself, hoping that eventually I would be able to overcome my fears. Even now, I still struggle with anxiety. This is especially true now, as graduation looms just a few short months ahead. Despite this, I feel more equipped to handle whatever lies ahead. I've made a lot of progress, and I've learned not to let my fears paralyze me.

In addition to embracing discomfort in my personal life, UW has given me the opportunity to do so intellectually. My classes have exposed me to ideas that I had never encountered before, and viewpoints that challenged my own. These past four years, I've had to learn to think critically, engage with nuance, and be open to changing my mind. At times, I've had to renegotiate some of my most deeply held beliefs. This was an uncomfortable process, but one that was invaluable in shaping me as a student, and as an adult.

Learning Beyond the Syllabus

Everyone talks about the freedom that you get when you go to college. Usually, they're talking about living on your own and no longer having your parents holding your hand. But in addition to this, there's also a sense of academic freedom. I can choose to merely listen to the lectures and do the assignments, doing the bare minimum to pass my classes. Or I can ask questions, make connections, and put in the effort to dig deeply into the content. A syllabus may tell me what I'm going to be tested on, but ultimately I determine what I take away from my classes.

I've also extended this philosophy beyond my classes. In high school, I had "school mode" and "regular mode", and when I was in the latter, I avoided thinking about anything that I was learning in my classes. UW has taught me, however, that I can get more out of my classes and more out of my life by remaining curious and committing myself to learning all of the time–not just when I'm in class.

AI Ethics

In addition to these themes, this portfolio presents the winding road that I took to discovering one of my academic passions: AI ethics. Like most 18 year olds, when I started college I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I won't say that I now have everything completely figured out. But what I do know is that I want to do work that does good, and one of the ways I believe I can achieve that is by combining the technical skills I gained in my AMATH classes with the perspectives I've gained through Honors and social science classes. AI is an increasingly powerful, increasingly pervasive tool. Already, it is causing harm in a multitude of ways, often to communities that are already marginalized. As someone who is planning to go into a technical field, I believe it's my responsibility to advocate for responsible, pro-social AI use.