Autumn 2023

Peer Educating, Struggles with research, taking 21 credits, not really having time for other stuff, iGEM writing, Economics major

Artifacts

As part of training to be a Peer Educator, I tried to get better at actively participating in knowledge co-creation. To me this meant both contributing by asking questions and bringing up discussion points and contributing by empathizing and quickly understanding thought processes of others before responding. To create a welcoming environment for the students in class, I felt I was extremely willing to be flexible and give grace to others, and a positive side-effect I noticed was that I started giving more grace to myself. Although I was nervous to teach, I found being authentic to myself helped me facilitate engagement that was driven by the students, which was what I really wanted for the students. There were some challenges with time management and appreciating (from the other side) that students have to invest time into the class for it to be meaningful. Overall, I really enjoyed being a PE and hoped to stay involved in education!

Though I was a biology major, I also wanted to do the economics major. The intro level classes for economics were super easy and didn't feel very helpful, but I thought that there were some tantalizing thought-threads to follow in terms of gaining economic perspectives on the healthcare industry in the United States. I was also taking ECON 300 this quarter, which was a big step-up math-wise from ECON 200. It was exciting to be challenged by the content and I actually went to class despite it being from 6:30 p.m. to 8:20 p.m. The approximately 10 out of 30 of us that went to class regularly ended up being relatively close class friends. The excitement of learning more applied things was tempered by the nervousness of having to take the written exam and apply for the Economics major, but I was glad to get in!

One class I really enjoyed was Honors 230 - Safety-Net Hospitals in the U.S. This class got me thinking about the implementation of policies within a system versus the intention of the policy, which I had already started thinking about as I continued working and promoting recent bills passed by the Washington State Senate. Learning about health metrics and evaluation was also really interesting; I tried using my economics brain to consider how hospitals would consider themselves successful through minimizing costs. Questions about the minimum standard of care, how different populations interact with the systems, how different parts of the system like federal insurance interact with the different types of hospitals, and many other fields started popping into my head. This class provided me information and opportunities to explore several thought threads that I would still like to think about as I advance into a career.