My first year of college was online.
​Needless to say, there were ups and downs, but here are some of the things that made my year:

Autumn 2020

My first quarter of college, all online. I took HONORS 100, CHEM 145 (Honors General Chemistry), PHYS 114+117 (Physics), and ENGL 182 (Honors Multimodal English Composition).

artifact 1: democratizing science

​This quarter, I took an English class on multimodal composition (ENGL 182). The final project of this class asked us to tackle educational technologies, something widely relevant right now with the transition to online school. Since I have always been interested by the scholarly publishing industry, I decided to research open access (OA) publishing. I was particularly interested in the intersection of publishing and science and how that is disseminated to the public; this all converges around Open Science and has gained a lot of attention recently with initiatives to make all COVID-19 research OA. My project, in the style of a public-facing long-form essay, examines the barriers to 100% OA publishing. I loved researching and writing about this topic because of its interdisciplinary implications and for the future of democratizing science, especially in a world rife with misinformation and political polarization. I was able to reflect upon my own personal situation and the broader context of education technologies through the class portfolio I made.

artifact 2: labs, at-home style

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This quarter, I am taking the first course in the Honors General Chemistry series (CHEM 145). This in-depth dive into chemistry has been both fascinating and challenging, and this combination was especially the case for the labs. For the first few labs, we had to code using Python. I had never used Python before and don’t love to code, so this was a huge challenge, but it ultimately taught me that coding has so many practical applications across the sciences (especially the life sciences, which is primarily where my interest lies). For the later labs in the course, we used at-home lab kits to conduct experiments. As you can imagine, doing science on a dorm room floor is not the most ideal of conditions. It was kind of a mess but also kind of fun. You can see what my chaotic lab setup looks like below (props to my roommate for allowing this explosion of stuff to happen for three hours every week). I think my at-home chem labs kind of epitomize how Zoom university is going: it's going.

Winter 2021

My second quarter of college, also all online. I took CHEM 155 (Honors General Chemistry), PHYS 115+118 (Physics), and ENGL 202 (English Language & Literature), and I started doing my squirrel research!

Spring 2021

My third quarter of college, also all online. I took CHEM 165 (Honors General Chemistry), PHYS 115+118 (Physics), and PHIL 160 (History and Philosophy of Science).

artifact: remembering why 

Spring quarter was honestly my favorite quarter yet, despite the Zoom burnout (which is saying a lot!). Several things collided this quarter to remind me of my love of science: my awesome CHEM 165 professor, Professor Xiao, my very interesting history and philosophy of science class (PHIL 160), and the very cool scientists I got to meet at my weekly lab meetings. All of these things are too intermeshed in my brain to really parse them out, but I can honestly say that I'm ending this quarter with a much greater appreciation of science and scientists. Maybe it was getting to learn about the history of science--from alchemy to modern physics--that hooked me. Or it could have been Professor Xiao's awesome Art of Science assignment (see mine below). Or maybe it was hearing really smart people talk about things that they love on a weekly basis at my lab meetings that did it. All I know is that I'm so grateful for this quarter for reminding me why I'm doing what I'm doing and for inspiring me about what I might want to do in the future. It was honestly a really great end to a really tough year--things are looking up what with vaccines, sunny weather, good friends, and excitement for all the future science courses I get to take at UW! :)
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This is what I did for my Art of Science project! It features female X-ray crystallographers and their scientific "superpower" in a twist on Superman's X-ray vision. My idea for this came right after we learned about X-ray diffraction in my chemistry class and about gender's relationship with science in my philosophy class. At the same time, I was reading James Watson's The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA and I was really shocked about his treatment of Rosalind Franklin (I'd heard the story before, but reading it firsthand is something else...). Anyway, I had a lot of fun researching these cool women scientists and making this little drawing this quarter!

Summer 2021

I took BIOL 180 (Introductory Biology) online this summer while doing evolutionary biology research most of my days.

​artifact: sciencing!

This summer I had the amazing opportunity to do research all summer with the American Museum of Natural History's NSF-funded REU program. I worked on an evolutionary biology project on squirrels. I got the chance to present my work at the end of the summer at the program's symposium, and I found that presenting my results was actually super fun. I really enjoyed synthesizing all of the results into a presentation and paper, and I found that I had even more possible research questions as I was writing up my discussion. As I've gotten to get more invested in the projects, I've learned that I really enjoy the research process, from data collection to statistical analyses to results presentation. 
    The main highlight of my summer was that "Team Squirrel" got to go to Friday Harbor Labs on San Juan Island to CT scan our squirrels. The island was amazing--we went snorkeling, as you can see below--and meeting other scientists was super cool. This summer has helped me realize that research is potentially something I'm interested in pursuing as a career. I'm so grateful I'm getting these opportunities early in my undergraduate career, as they really are opening my mind to what my future could look like.