ENDEAVRide
Over the summer, I joined the ENDEAVRide project to help turn Nolanville, TX into the first small smart city. My own role involved creating the scripts that allowed users of a mobile app to coordinate with a remote doctor for telemedicine visits, and assisting with the development of the mobile app itself. This opportunity has allowed me to see how my knowledge and skills in the realm of software can be applied to the real world to help actual people, and also how to work alongside people from disciplines different than my own.
This project has taught me the importance of quality communication, especially in an interdisciplinary project where team members from unique disciplines won't have a full understanding of what other team members are doing. I also gained experience teaching myself how to do particular programming tasks and learned a practical programming language (JavaScript)!
Sophomore Advisor
Last Spring, I accepted a position as a Sophomore Advisor to freshmen in the University Honors class of 2024. This year, I have been serving as a peer mentor for fourteen freshmen by hosting individual 1 on 1 sessions and weekly family meetings to advise them through their college transition, both academically and socially. I have worked alongside my fellow SAs to plan numerous (online) social events and I look forward to making even more of an impact as the year progresses!
Serving as an SA has been a humbling experience. I've learned a lot about mentorship and what it means to be a leader. Last week, I finished 1 on 1 meetings with each of my fourteen freshmen mentees, and for most of them, I felt I was able to help them in at least some minor way, either by giving suggestions on how to reach out to professors and TAs for academic help, or how to look for student organizations or form study groups to make friends. At the same time, however, this semester has been challenging because these freshmen are going through a very different first year experience than the one I went through, so in some ways I did feel disappointed in my own lack of ability to give advice. All I could do is be there for them and let them know that they always had someone they could talk to. Overall, being an SA has given me knowledge and skills about people and leadership that I will be able to apply to any field that involves working with people (so pretty much all of them).