My strengths as a team member include always being willing to consider the different perspectives of those I am working with when making decisions and reaching conclusions. Everyone in a group has such a unique point of view and something specific to the way they perceive the world to bring to the table, so making sure to acknowledge that is important to making everyone feel heard and comfortable contributing which is something that I have always valued immensely. I have learned so much about what it means to be a team member from this experience, namely the significance of communication due to being key to ensuring that the entire group is on the same page regarding decisions and steps being taken to reach any collective goal. My role in the team has changed in that I have been afforded the opportunity to take on more responsibility with time and play a larger part in the study as it has continued to progress. Another change has been gradually feeling much more comfortable being able to contribute to group discussions. This was something I found myself being apprehensive about at the beginning of the year because of how foreign it was to me to share my thoughts in a professional setting not comprised of peers of mine, but overcoming this hurdle has helped me become a better team member and collaborator.

I have been lucky enough to participate in a range of positions throughout my undergraduate career that have allowed me to grow in both an academic and professional sense. My position as Bepko Learning Center Academic Mentor was so incredibly meaningful to me in that it gave me the chance to strengthen my interpersonal abilities through the routine correspondence and communication I between my mentees and faculty members. Working in this position for two semesters meant that I was able to expand on my leadership skills through helping students navigate course material in a group setting on a weekly basis. This experience is one I hold really dear because of how much it reaffirmed my love for any profession or occupation that allows me to make a lasting impact on the lives of others, and because of all of the skills I was able to walk away from it with, between those previously mentioned, to more technical skills, such as regularly recording attendance and using designated faculty sites to send out information to students or update grades.

My continued volunteer work at the Johnson County Library has been another experience that I have gained so much insight from in how it has allowed me to realize how important places that foster community are and how being a part of causes like that can teaching you indispensable lessons. Throughout the years that I have been a volunteers at the library, I have been able to help serve its patrons through the organization of donation materials, preparing activity materials for families who regularly frequent the library, and arranging displays, among other activities.

A skill that I feel I was able to gain from the fall semester as far as non-LHSI experiences was my Intro to Medical Humanities course where I completed a project involving interviewing several individuals and compiling their responses into a cohesive essay where themes that the three interviewees had in common were discussed. This allowed me to strengthen my interview and analysis skills in that I had to sift through question responses to draw similarities between them. I found this to be directly applicable to my internship site due to a major aspect of the study I am involved in having to do with holding interviews and collecting data from participant responses to analyze them for consistent themes and later compile those themes together.  

I entered the year with the thought that activities and responsibilities that are communication-based are where I most, excelled, but I actually found that this was an area that I had a lot of room for improvement in and have made it a priority to continue to work on. Different work settings require different styles and modes of communication, and getting accustomed to both that, and overcoming the hesitance to reach out when encountering any issues have both been areas that I still have space for development in. On the flip side, a new skill that I found that I had (or that I least wasn't fully aware of) was that my writing-based strengths came in handy when it came to taking detailed notes and summarizing material. This really helped me any time that I needed a refresher on a certain aspect of the study or what was discussed during a certain meeting because having documented it thoroughly made sure that I always had a summary I had drifted available for me to refer to.