This post was written by Peer Advisor Michaela Stanch, a junior in SEAS studying Civil Engineering and minoring in International Affairs.
I, like many UHPers, hold myself to a certain level of excellence. In the spring of my sophomore year, I wanted to maintain this level in all aspects of my life. I had an internship, leadership positions in multiple student orgs, and I was going to take 19 credits: four engineering courses, two honors courses, and LSPA 1037, or Indoor Soccer. Due to many unexpected and traumatic circumstances, I ended up taking three incompletes, dropping two leadership positions, and missing at least five weeks of my internship. The only thing close to the standards that I had set for myself in January was the “A” I got in Indoor Soccer. By the time I finished my incompletes, my GPA for that semester was a 2.57.
In order to stay in the University Honors Program, you need to maintain the mathematical possibility of finishing with a 3.4 GPA. While yes, you can do this by keeping your GPA above a 3.4 all your semesters, that’s not required. Your overall GPA doesn’t need to be a straight line; it can (and probably will) go up and down, as long as it ends at or above a 3.4. You are in the UHP because the UHP knows you are capable of that.
I took Indoor Soccer last spring for fun. I am no Ella Masar nor Meghan Klingenberg, but I genuinely enjoy the sport. However, after our first class, I knew two things: I was bad, and everyone else in the class was good. Some days, I was really bad; I passed the ball to the other team, I kicked someone’s shins instead of the ball, and, the one time I was allowed to play goalie, the ball slowly rolled right in between my legs into the goal. Other days, I was actually decent; I blocked goals with everything besides my arms, I passed the ball to people on my own team, and I even scored a goal once.
However, my bad and good moments also didn’t really matter to my teammates nor my coach; what mattered was that we played together and were healthy and happy. When I got a mild concussion from getting hit in the head by a ball, my coach made sure I got rest and didn’t go to class. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t there on the team; my health was more important than any goals, passes, or blocks I missed. After making a comment about how bad I was in April, my coach said “You’ve really grown this semester. You’ve gotten to be a pretty good defender.” At that moment, I felt a little closer to Masar and Klingenberg.
I’m pretty bad with metaphors, but by the end of that semester, I felt as if LSPA 1037 was a metaphor for me and how to approach my life. I learned that you won’t be at your level of excellence all the time, and that’s OK. It is OK to not be perfect. Your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health are far more important than being at the ridiculous level of excellence you set for yourself. You may not know all the rules, and that’s normal. That doesn’t mean that you can’t play. Most of all, I learned that it’s not about each good or bad moment; it’s about how you feel at the end. It’s about knowing that win, lose, or draw, you played your hardest in the circumstances you were given, and your team couldn’t be happier with that. It’s about knowing that you are meant to be in the position you’re in, even if you don’t believe you’re supposed to be there.
This semester, I’m taking 17 credits (two LSPA courses), focusing on fewer student organizations, and I have a fun, very casual job as an usher at Lisner on the weekends. I see a therapist every week. I could not be happier with the position I’m in, because I know that my circumstances and I have changed to where I can succeed academically without sacrificing my health. And hey, next semester I’m registered for Indoor Soccer. Maybe I’ll score two goals this time.
Category: Student Peer Advisors
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The Extra-Curricular: GW STAR
This post was written by Peer Advisor Bridger Christian, a Junior in SMPA studying Political Communication.
Thanksgiving is only three weeks away, and I know we’ll all make it!
In this week’s edition of the Extra-Curricular, we’re going to look at a really great organization on campus, GW STAR, or Student Admissions Representatives! These are the people who interact with prospective students by participating in information sessions, hosting students on overnight campus visits, and yes, giving tours.
I was a member of STAR all of my Freshman and half of my Sophomore year at GW, and I have to say, it was a great experience. I only decided to hang up my GW logo polo after I accepted an internship in the US Senate that also required me giving a lot of tours. No matter how much you like giving tours, four times a week is just too much! Even though I don’t participate in the organization anymore, I can still tell you that it is truly a great group of people, and it’s a great way to get to know GW better.
So let’s start from the beginning. Going into college, I always thought it’d be cool to be a tour guide. I visited about 20 colleges across the US throughout high school (and applied to 18!), and I always thought that the tour guide really made a huge difference regarding how I felt about a school. At some schools, I would have high expectations and the tour guide would let me down, and at others I’d be on the fence and the tour guide would sell me on applying.
My tour guide when I visited GW was absolutely great. He was a fellow Montanan from Great Falls, and so we had an instant connection. He really made me feel comfortable leaving a state known for the great outdoors and serenity for the hustle and bustle of a city that, including the metro, has more people than all of Montana!
When I got to GW, I immediately sought out GW STAR. By the second week I was in an information session, and by the end of the first month I had applied to the student organization. I worked through the interview process, in which you are asked to do things like pretend you are describing a major or building to a group of prospective students, I gave my mock tour, and I was off!
I really enjoyed two aspects of the organization more than anything else. The first, of course, was developing incredibly cheesy jokes and trying them out on unknowing students. For example, I always thought it was really funny to stop at the hippo outside Lisner and say “This isn’t a real hippo of course, real hippos live in the same place as people who don’t want to go to GW… Da-Nile!” I always tried to add something new and witty to every tour I gave, and it really made the process tons of fun.
The second thing I loved was just interacting with students. GW is a place that people from all over the world aspire to attend, and thus, you get to meet people from all walks of life. I remember one time I was observing a new tour guide give a tour, and I was able to spend the entire time just talking with this dad of twins from South Carolina. He and I really had a great time, laughed, and in the end, I think I was really able to make him feel more comfortable about the prospect of his students attending GW.
If you do become a tour guide, I’ve got one piece of advice for you: make business cards! I developed my own cards, with my own custom GW STAR logo, and because of that, I was able to hear back from many people who had gone on tours with me. Some told me thanks for the tour, but they’d be attending other colleges or universities, while others told me they were accepting an offer to attend GW and that we should grab coffee sometime! It was great to know that, even if it wasn’t especially consequential, I helped play a role in working people through their college decision.
One other thing that’s fun about being in STAR is that it’s not only about giving tours (though that is the main part). In addition to showing people around campus, you also have the opportunity (not the obligation) to host prospective students on overnight visits in your residence hall. You get a free dinner voucher, and you get to do fun stuff like take them to class, show them around the monuments, and even visit a museum. I only did this once, but it was a great experience, and the person I hosted now lives in the same residence hall as I do!
In addition to all of this, being a member of STAR looks great on your resume. Studies have shown that, outside of holding a leadership position on campus (RA, President of SA, etc.), being a tour guide is one of the best things you can have on your application. It shows you work well with people, that you’ve represented a large institution before, and that you’re energetic and engaged. It also shows you are willing to do a little research and absorb information in order to do you job well.
So if you’re looking for an organization on campus, I recommend giving STAR a close examination. They select new members at the beginning of each semester, so look out for the flyers in the Marvin Center elevators after the Holiday Break! It’s a great way to let your GW passion show, to meet new people, and to help prospective students decide whether or not GW is right for them.
From Morocco With Love [Study Ablog]
This blog post was written by senior Pooja Shivaprasad, a peer advisor in the Elliott school majoring in Middle East studies and minoring in biology.
I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would have the opportunity to spend four months in Morocco for a semester abroad. My decision was made quickly without much thought, and I had no idea what life would be like across the Atlantic. My Arabic language program with AMIDEAST gave me the opportunity to take insightful and challenging classes ranging from Islamic Women’s Studies to Political Science and everything in between.
Rabat, the capital city of Morocco, is situated right on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. My homestay was just a few feet from the shore, and I enjoyed running down to the beach in the evenings with my roommate, Haley. Life in Morocco was unlike anything I experienced back home in DC. Every weekend I was in a different city and sometimes even a different country. There is only nine miles of water between Morocco and Spain, so it was easy to take a weekend to travel to countries throughout Europe. Having the chance to interact with new cultures provides you with knowledge and skills that transcend a classroom setting.
Morocco was not short of beautiful scenery, incredible people, or fascinating cultural experiences. I had the opportunity to teach English in a small school in the Middle Atlas Mountains, where people traveled hundreds of miles by donkey to get to the next town. On another weekend, I found myself camping out in the Sahara with a family of Bedouins just on the border of Algeria. One of my favorite cities was Chefchaouen, which was a city in the mountains painted entirely in a stunning ocean blue. Studying abroad makes you incredibly independent and it can even give you reverse culture shock when you come back home.
There were certainly many cultural barriers and language miscommunications; however, people were always more than happy to help you. Morocco is oftentimes seen as one of the “go to’s” for students learning Arabic, but I highly recommend this program for French speakers as well. The awareness you gain from traveling to a country like Morocco is invaluable, and I’m so glad I didn’t think twice about going there!
#HonorsProblems: The Official 10-Step Guide to Major Changes
Your guide to finding (and losing) a second major, by Eva Martin. Eva is Vice President of the Peer Advisors, and is a junior double majoring in Middle Eastern Studies and International Affairs with a concentration in Security Policy. Or is she?
Step 1: Get really excited about your second major. It’s a perfect fit, you just declared, and now you MUST be super marketable for all the jobs you want.
Step 2: Take some classes in your major. Because you love the topic, you already know a lot of the basic stuff. The classes aren’t super interesting, but you like being able to nod along and put together the pieces of what you already know. And you get to write papers about whatever you want that’s related to class, so you investigate some very specific things you’re into. Which is pretty awesome.
Step 3: Sign up for some more classes about things that you are into. They sound super relevant, and you’re excited to investigate further the things that you like.
Step 4: It’s a new year. You’re doing some leadership things, so it takes you some time to feel settled. The classes are okay. You go over some things you already know (like where the Sunni-Shia divide originated… for the seventh time), but you’re confident that soon enough things will get interesting.
Step 5: They don’t. You’re learning the same things you know. Over and over. With people who don’t know them, so they ask questions you know detailed answers to, and professors give them a quick 30 second rundown. And your papers are all on assigned topics, and it feels like high school (“Describe two challenges the Ottoman Empire faced and how the way they were resolved shaped the structure of society.”).
Step 6: Get frustrated. This isn’t why you wanted to take this major. You wanted to delve into the details and build a complex knowledge base. You wanted depth of knowledge, and instead you’re hitting some arbitrary bottom, again and again.
Step 7: Decide this major isn’t for you. You aren’t getting anything out of it. It’s frustrating. You don’t want to go to class, which being a typical Honors kid is weird. You usually LOVE class. You don’t feel like yourself, and it’s not right.
Step 8: Talk to everyone you know who you trust as an advisor. Talk to Catherine and Mary. Talk to your favorite professors. Talk to your friends, even though they have no idea what’s going on. Tell them what’s going on, tell them how you feel, tell them you want out.
Step 9: Tell your parents. It’s going to be okay. You can still get a job. Actively explore your options.
Step 10: Go to your official advisor. Fill out a form. Drop your major. Experience the freedom of saying “no (more).”
If you ever want to talk about a major not fitting, shoot me an email (evamartin@gwu.edu). I’ve been there. Dropping a major isn’t a failure. Knowing something isn’t right for you and letting go of it is a sign of personal growth. Now I can take classes I like rather than ones that fulfill requirements. I can take an internship for credit, I can dedicate more time and energy to being an RA and peer advisor, and I can maybe graduate early. It turns out major changes (get it) can be a good thing.
Intern Files: RWJ Summer Clinical Internship Program
This blog post was written by Shelly Sharma, a junior in CCAS studying Psychology with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience. Shelly is also pursuing the pre-health track.
As the summer of 2015 was quickly approaching and it occurred to me I had no definite summer plans, I quickly began perusing the interwebs to find either an internship or something medical related to do during the summer. After constantly finding about programs where the application deadline had passed, I finally found the RWJ Summer Clinical Internship Program (SCIP.) I knew I had to apply to the program right away for two reasons: 1. The deadline had not passed yet and 2. It was in NJ, close by my house, so I did not have to worry about finding housing for the summer! After filling out a quick application, asking professors for recommendations, and waiting frantically for a decision, I heard back and was accepted into the program. Going into the SCIP Program, I had absolutely no idea what to expect and how this would be one of the most pivotal moments in my pre-med journey.
The doctor I was shadowing, Dr. Gupta, was trained in endovascular and vascular neurosurgery. Thus, during my six weeks, I got the opportunity to spend time in the operating room (my favorite place), the angiosuite, where endovascular neurosurgery takes place, and the clinic, where patients would come in after surgeries for a checkup. Additionally, during lunchtime, different doctors would come in and talk to the SCIP students about their specialty in a seminar series. Thus, I was not only learning about neurosurgery, but all the different fields in medicine, such as from OB-GYN, Emergency Medicine, and Pediatric Hematology and Oncology.
Dr. Gupta was an amazing doctor to shadow because he cared so much about teaching students about the wonderful field of neurosurgery. When the program first began, I was so afraid of asking Dr. Gupta or anyone else on his team questions because I did not want to sound dumb. However, the whole neurosurgery team at RWJ encouraged asking questions and maximizing learning, so once I let go of my fear, I would constantly ask questions. Many times my questions were answered by another questions. At first what was frustrating was the best learning technique ever! I was constantly thinking and working to find my own answers, well with the help of the doctors and nurses, of course! This was especially beneficial for my SCIP presentation where I had to in about five minutes explain how to treat a brain aneurysm!
Why was this such a rewarding experience?
Although I was merely a shadow, I saw such amazing procedures, met wonderful doctors and nurses, and learned that being a doctor is the career for me. There were times where I was in the operating room and unable to properly see the procedures going on, but I still learned about the procedures. The surgeons either talked through the procedure or explained what was going on afterwards. All the doctors at RWJ are committed to their patients. Even though the doctors were in a constant rush, if a patient or a member of a patient’s family ever needed to talk to the doctors, they took the time to talk to them. Seeing this everyday was how I figured out that being pre-med is the right track for me. I cannot imagine doing anything else, but coming into a hospital every day, meeting with patients, doing surgeries, and working so close with other doctors. Doctors are students for life, constantly are learning about new techniques and improvements in medicine, meeting new people, and changing the world.
Six weeks, and what felt like a thousand plus hours later (okay it may have just been about 380 hours), I have gained the clinical experience that medical schools look for, but more than anything I have found my calling in life. The journey to medical school is hard, but seeing how incredible all the doctors at RWJ are I know it is all worth it! I only wish this program lasted longer, but alas all good things must come to an end.
After being a part of SCIP, here is my advice for pre-meds:
- ASK QUESTIONS! No question is dumb. If I was not encouraged to ask questions this summer, I don’t think that the experience would have been as amazing! Shout out to the neurosurgery team at RWJ that would answer my questions during surgeries!
- Carry your phone at all times! This one is kinda weird, I know, but it is needed so that you can quickly be called to the other side of the hospital if an interesting case comes by or simply to take notes.
- That being said always, always in a clinical setting take notes! Information is constantly being thrown at you, the names of everything medical are complicated, and there is only so much that you can remember!
- Keep in touch with your mentors. Mentors are not just wonderful people for letters of recs, but they are there to answer any questions you may have about the field and can give you a glimpse into what your future may be like!
- If you are looking for clinical experience or summer internships, here is an awesome website that has a complied list of programs!
- Being pre-med is not easy, but if you are truly passionate about it, stick with it because in the end it will all be worth it!
If you have any questions about being pre-med or about my internship or are just fascinated by neurology or neurosurgery, feel free to email me at shells_sharma@gwmail.gwu.edu!!
Peer Advisor Bios
Meet the 2015-2016 Honors Peer Advisors! Our Peer Advisors are a diverse group of UHP students dedicated to supporting our new Honors freshmen. All freshmen have a Peer Advisor assigned to them, but students are encouraged to meet any of the Peer Advisors with whom they may share interests. Check out their bios here, and search by name, academic interest, or advising speciality!
Honors Peer Advising Applications
Honors Peer Advisors are dedicated to serving the UHP community by actively engaging with current and prospective UHP students. If you are interested in helping others succeed and want to be more involved, come to an information session about the Peer Advisors program. Applications can be completed online. Peer Advisors help fellow students with course selection, time management and extracurriculars, four year planning, study abroad options as well as provide a student perspective of the UHP to prospective students and parents.
Interested?
* Attend an info session:
Monday, January 26 5-6pm in the Club Room,
Friday, January 30 2-3pm in the Club Room, or
Tuesday, February 3 10-11am in the Club Room
* Complete an application online
Apply here if you’re new to the Honors Peer Advisors
Apply here if you’re applying to return to the Honors Peer Advisors
Apply here if you’re interested in a leadership position with the Honors Peer Advisors
The application deadline is February 6. For questions regarding the application, please contact Catherine Chandler at cbrady@gwu.edu. Decisions will be announced in March.
[SPA 2014-2015] Michaela Stanch
Hey guys! I’m Michaela, from the lovely town of Friendswood, Texas, a little piece of Quaker heaven outside of Houston. I am majoring in Civil Engineering with a concentration in Environmental Engineering, as well as minoring in International Affairs. This givese a great knowledge of both engineering and IA, so if anyone needs help with those requirements or time management, hit me up friends. The greatest thing about the Honors program to me is Catherine Chandler. She’s basically a superhero, but she doesn’t need a secret identity. Apart from being Catherine’s personal dragon I enjoy knitting and crocheting ALL the things, climbing monuments and fountains, being a nerdfighter, and watching Doctor Who, Cosmos, and Say Yes to the Dress.
SPAcialties: Engineering, minoring across schools, time management, scheduling.
[SPA 2014-2015] Alex Jeffery
Hi guys! My name is Alex Jeffery, and I’m a sophomore (but graduating a year early, so a junmore?) in the UHP, majoring in International Affairs with a concentration in International Politics. I am from Westfield, New Jersey which is in the Northern section! At school I’m a member of the fraternity ZBT, and enjoy doing community service work (I’ll be serving as a CBC guide this year, which is a super fun pre-college program focused on community service!). I’m a huge politics junky, and love having political discussions and debates. The honors program is one of the best parts of my college experience. I really loved my Origins classes, particularly first semester with Professor Christov. I love the laid back atmosphere, and the way that we are able to interact with advisors and professors on a more personal level!
SPAcialties: Scheduling (particularly if you’re trying to graduate early), living on the Vern (not in honors housing, but still), and trying to adjust to the college life.
[SPA 2014-2015] Wes Waterhouse
Hello! I’m Wes, and I hail from the metropolis of North Reading Massachusetts! It’s secret, so you probably haven’t heard of it. Anyway, I’m currently a sophomore working towards a Biology degree with a pre-med track. (yes, I know, ANOTHER aspiring doctor) outside of class, I participate in the club ultimate team here at GDub, the Hippos. I’m also an EMT with EMeRG, and I expect I’ll be working in the Townhouse this fall.
SPAcialties: Being a raging cynic (but a friendly one), Pre-Med things, study buddies and general advice
