This was an HR elective I took that actually fulfilled one of my Leadership minor course requirements too. The class was centered around learning the different facets of leadership, theories over time, and how leadership can be developed over time. I took this course Winter 2024. A significant portion of our grade was the Impact Project, in which we had to develop a business plan to take a $50 of seed money from our professor and make as much money for a non-profit of our choice. My team chose Seattle Children's Hospital and made beaded bracelets to support their cause. Throughout the class, we had different practical leadership training sessions such as feedback training, group work, personality tests, and an examination of our leadership style and philosophy.   

Receiving Feedback: One large part of this class was filming ourselves working as a group and then being assigned another group's video to give feedback on. So I both gave and received feedback from a classmate on the way I worked in a group setting. For this exercise, we will focus on the receiving feedback aspect. My classmate provided me with 3 strengths and 3 areas of improvement from the video, which ranged from my posture to the length in which I talked. I was able to take the areas of improvement, most of which I was unaware I was doing, and improve for the next time I worked in a group. I was more aware of certain subconscious behaviors, like fiddling with my rings while listening, and could keep it in mind for the next time my group met.

Listening: Another exercise we did in class revolved around listening practice. We would have little role-playing scenarios with "employees" exhibiting some kind of emotion and we would have to identify their feelings in an attempt to show we were listening. It started with identifying their feelings by saying something like "It sounds like you're feeling ___" and then working with the employee to identify next steps. Did they need support? Solutions? How can you as the "manager" help them in this situation? Do they just need someone to listen? It was stressful at first because I wanted to be a "good" manager by listening really well but sometimes I would spend too much time trying to say the right things instead of just going with my gut.

Reflection & Application: Naturally, this class involved a lot of reflection and application of different learnings from various in-class exercises, personality tests, and other activities. We had to write a reflection paper in which I discussed my leadership style in the context of our class, various leadership quotes I identified with, and how I think I will use the different learnings from this class (like the feedback and listening exercises) to truly make a difference in the workplace. 

This is by far one of my favorite classes I've ever taken at UW. I had the privilege of being in the last ever class of this course, as the professor who used to teach it has retired since Spring 2021. This course combined both the practical applications of photography and mixed it with the science of how a camera operates. I learned about how cameras work and how to "scientifically" take good photos using different settings like aperture and shutter speed, but also the artistic side of photography like composition and lighting. We were tasked with creating a final project (theme of our choice) to demonstrate our understanding of the course curriculum— inspired by the "anything can be an album cover" trend on TikTok, I created new album covers for songs from the playlist I would listen to while taking photos for other projects that quarter (shown below). 

Excellence: I definitely put a lot of effort into this class. Because I took it during COVID, taking photos for this class was an excuse to go outside and actually walk around, explore Seattle, and enjoy the nice spring weather. Because of my pre-existing interest in photography, I was desperate to learn more to improve my own skills and therefore tried very hard to apply all of our learnings into every assignment. I shot the pictures for my final project over the span of 4-5 days, with quite a few being taken in the corner of my dorm room in the middle of the night. I smeared honey on my wall, stayed out until sunrise at 5am, spilled orange soda all over the floor, and nearly fell into Drumheller Fountain getting these shots but it was so worth the final product. To this day, it is my favorite and proudest assignment that I've ever submitted. 

Resiliency: While this class was a lot of fun, I also experienced a lot of setbacks that threw a wrench in my plans. While shooting for our "motion" unit, the mirror on my camera (which was quite old already) flew off, rendering my camera useless and my project unfinished. I had to scramble to find a camera repair shop close to UDistrict that could fix my camera under short notice (usually, a broken mirror is unfixable, but they managed to resecure it temporarily so I could finish my project) and ask my professor and TAs for an extension so I could submit it after my camera was fixed. I had the cops called on me during one shoot (to be fair, I did look fairly suspicious pointing my camera at cars on Montlake for an hour during rush hour) and during my final project shoot, I accidentally broke my tripod while taking a picture. Despite all of these setbacks, I was able to pivot and make do with temporary solutions, ask for help, and just grit my teeth to endure. In hindsight, these were more dramatic at the time than they are now, but I'm still glad I was able to submit a project I'm proud of.

Sample pictures from various assignments from the quarter