Autumn 2023
Time to dive in!
This quarter was FULL of wacky twists and turns, for both academic AND professional opportunities.
Running WILD from Jackson to Bend
Attending the Jackson Wild Summit
and Base Camp 2023
After an intense summer in the world of marine science/scicomm with NOAA Fisheries, I was thrust into another realm of excitement when I discovered my acceptance into the Jackson Wild Summit Crew program, REDucation (run by RED Digital Cinema), and Creator Camp's Base Camp!
I had never been so close to SO MANY people with the exact same passions and professional alignments in my entire life. Going to Jackson, I was sharing drinks and stories with NatGeo and BBC execs and met many other young filmmakers looking to break into the industry. I have always felt very alone in some of my adventures, considering not many folks back home had the same level of drive or interest in this very niche world of creative work. Whether it was wildlife, or just making videos, I always struggled to articulate my struggles as a creative to my friends and family who knew little to nothing about the field.
Now, I was SURROUNDED. Being one of the youngest people in the Summit space, and at the Base Camp event, was a bit scary at first. Eventually, I grew past the fear since most folks were actually taking me more seriously than I could have anticipated. I have grown to understand the importance of community in these creative fields, and I cannot express how thankful I am for the adventures I've gone on since then.
BEND OR
Global Challenges: Ways of Knowing
Moderating GCIA for 2023!
Halfway through my summer, I received a Message from the Honors office inviting me to moderate this year's Global Challenges event. I immediately loved the idea, although I was nervous about taking on another moderation gig so quickly after setting up a hectic fall for myself. Ultimately, I had the most incredible time organizing prompts, HONORS100 class visits, and ultimately working the event itself. I was also given the creative liberty to make some visuals for the event (included on the left!) which was a great opportunity to explore my design/graphics style. I loved seeing my friends and family at the event, which eased many of my nerves for the overall talk.
This was an amazing experience working with professors/instructors that meant so much to me at the time, and I hope I can keep practicing my public speaking/moderation moving forward in events similar to this format.
At the link below is a little snippet of the event recording - aside from some silly audio problems, I thought that the conversation was incredibly rich and engaging. Cheers to many more interdisciplinary conversations!
Focus on Potential Beyond the Pain
HONORS 394/CHID 210 Final Project
One of the academic project highlights of this quarter was my time filming, editing, and writing for my group's final project in our CHID course about the concept of University.
Throughout the quarter, we unpacked various social and political issues that have played out on this very campus, which was incredibly eye-opening to me, even as a long-time Seattle resident/lifelong husky. I learned about the Alaska-Yukon-Pacifc expedition for the VERY first time from this course, and I'm quite disappointed that it didn't come up in my education or personal research at any point prior to the course.
Halfway through the quarter, we were assigned a group project to make some type of presentation/media/project about a UW story of our choice. My group decided to choose UW and incarceration, a topic many of us were vaguely familiar with. Straight away, reach of us dove into our own topics, spanning from family assistance programs, education, and project potential moving forward.
On the right is our final film titled "Exploitation to Alliance". I spent much of my dead week with my nose to the grindstone to edit and animate components of the video, which only successfully uploaded to our canvas assignment THE MORNING OF our presentation!!! Scary and stressful timing, so it was yet again another stellar reminder of not to procrastinate on projects of this scale. However, I am still really proud of the sheer amount of work I was able to pull off in such a short amount of time.
All in all, I was really happy that I got to integrate my film/editing skills into another school project. I love finding ways to practice things that don't necessarily come up in my day-to-day studies, so this project was a joy to complete.