Zhenyan's Reflection
Keywords:
During these past 2 months, what were your major duties and how did they relate to your academic studies?
During these past 2 months, I worked primarily on building the curriculum for Youth Workshops on weekdays and delivering these workshops on Saturday. The rest of my time was spent on camp training, program planning for fall, and team meetings on Sundays. Given that my main priority was teaching youth workshops, I refined my communication skills a lot over the past 2 months. I could physically feel myself becoming more confident and comfortable in public speaking, teaching, and giving presentations; being a psychology major, these skills are essential to my academic studies!
In May you were asked to envision how U+ would contribute to your growth. How has your time here contributed to your personal and professional development? Were there any unexpected challenges or benefits?
My time at U+ has significantly contributed to my personal and professional growth. Personally, I gained valuable proficiency in public speaking from delivering youth workshops at partnering community libraries. I learned how to keep people engaged in the presentation and involved in their own learning, which is a useful skill for my future academically. Professionally, I honed a lot of technical skills like Canva design, Google Sheets/Excel, and navigating Google Workspace. I also took on new challenges like flyer distribution, grant writing, and attending a large technology/networking conference. I really value the challenges I took on this month because they took me out of my comfort zone, allowing me to grow as a person.
Describe 2-3 projects from your co-op that you’re particularly proud of, and how they have helped you grow academically and/or professionally?
A project I’m really proud of is my youth workshops. Leading this project myself, I got to see the workshops flourish from beginning to the end. As I wrapped up the final session earlier this month, I felt extremely fulfilled when I heard positive feedback from the participants in a live setting. From this project, I learned the importance of considering the perspective of the people receiving these workshops to best help prepare them academically/professionally. This has great relevance to my professional career goals where I will be doing similar work in a clinical setting.
Another major project I took on in June was Collision Conference 2024. When I was first assigned to lead this project, I found it rather daunting because I heard around 40,000 business owners and startup companies were attending over 4 days. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a large tech conference like this, but it ended up being the highlight of my month. I got to hear from and speak to industry experts and startup owners on rising Edu-Tech and Med-Tech innovations and how they will drive the future of education and healthcare, which both are careers I’m passionate about!
Please nominate someone who deserves the employee of the month award and explain why briefly. You can nominate more than one person.
Megan — for dealing with those complaints like a boss
Carson — for leading 3 major projects at once and still hustling
Catherine — for being the best HR and grant writer ever
Christina — for counting all those houses (I’m so sorry!)
Aminah — for always working diligently and calling places to do flyer drop-offs
Share photos of fond memories you made while at work.
