2021 - 22
My year has been dominated by the NEXT Innovation Scholars programme and the accompanying Stanford University Innovation Fellows training and projects. I have met fantastic new people who have become the closest knit, most effective team I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I have completed several innovation consultancy projects, including teaching material to professors and PhDs that I had never heard of just a year ago. I have had the opportunity to travel around the country, make personal and professional connections with people both in my field and out of it, and be exposed to ideas that made me question if I really knew what I wanted to do with my career. The world of innovation and design thinking is a fascinating one and I can already see how it will dominate the rest of my time at UC. Looking ahead to my International Co-op experience starting in January, I am hoping to have the opportunity to work in a more design oriented space. With the pace of biomedical innovation only accelerating, I can see how developing these skills now will be invaluable to my future. My Skunkworks Co-op helped instill in me a passion for the engineering side of innovation, and marrying that with the divergent thinking and improvisation of NIS will hopefully set me up for a varied and interesting career.
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Aside from my academic and professional development, I have the unique opportunity this summer of taking classes purely for my own interest. My project to watch 150 films last year has given me a deep appreciation for the medium and so I took the opportunity this summer to take Intro to Screenwriting and Film Structures. It has been a rewarding experience to have a creative outlet with regular, constructive feedback from a professional, as well as guidance to develop a deeper understanding of this artform. It is experiences and classes like these that I think really exemplify the spirit of being a life-long learner. I do not know if I will have the opportunity to take classes purely for fun again during undergrad, but I am now seeing the immense value in structured, guided pursuit of my interests. Looking to the future, I hope online learning can eventually become as robust and rewarding as the in-person classroom experience. All the practice we're getting post-pandemic seems to be a sign of changing times, so perhaps in the future I will be able to continue my life-long education journey as a professional learner, having fun with every step along the way.
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