Year-In-Review

One of the aspects in which I had remarkable personal growth this year was learning how to orchestrate a team. I became the president of Residence Hall Association (RHA), an organization committed to bettering UC’s residence halls and residents through its pillars of Service, Advocacy and Representation. While stepping up to the position came with its set of challenges, I felt a constant push to better myself and the other executive board members that I worked with. Although making progress during RHA felt slow during some days, the seemingly microscopic efforts that we put in day in and day out accumulated into great accomplishments. Over the course of this school year, we hosted a regional leadership conference with over 250 students coming from schools in six states and D.C., provided thousands of dollars of funding to hall governments, and helped develop over 50 programs which had a total attendance of well over 3,000 students. I think part of our success as an organization comes from the fact that when you come across an organization as large as RHA, you have access to a diverse group of talented people who are great at doing their jobs. And while I still have a long way to go, I believe that I have seen a lot of growth in my leadership skills thanks to the incredible people around me. These skills are highly transferable, and I anticipate using these skills in future clubs, in my future career, and in my personal life.

Learning how to manage my time effectively has also been a perpetual challenge for me. Being involved in several extracurriculars, I found it increasingly difficult to balance schoolwork, extracurriculars, and me-time. After I felt the stress creeping up to me during the fall semester, I realized that I needed a systematic plan to regain control of my life before I was swallowed by it. First of all, I cut out things out of my schedule that held me back: social media usage, unimportant events, etc. Realizing that rest is just as important as work, I then created a schedule that included both my rest times and work times. Finally, I had some of my friends keep me accountable to make sure that I get certain tasks done. By repeating this process over and over and constantly re-evaluating my plan, I started to feel that I had more hours in the day again. However, I feel that my journey of improving my time-management has only just begun. As a pre-med student, I know that I will have to put in continuous effort of constant studying and maintaining a healthy lifestyle balance in order to prevent me from getting burnt out and demotivated.