Artifacts

Pictures, videos, and audio from events and classes that shaped my college experience.

Autumn 2021

Yiddish Music & Heritage Program

By getting to teach a class, I learned about my own Jewish heritage in preparation for the class, and I got to stretch my skills in musical genres different from the ones that I specialize in. I also got experience in helping teach adults far older than myself, and in how to effectively teach others songs by ear. By remaining involved in the Rhapsody Project, the music and heritage organization that this class was taught through, I've become more certain that I want to continue working in anti-racism activism and in music throughout the rest of college, and hopefully my life. This class and the organization in general have also given me a place off-campus that I can rely on for creative connections and community. I plan to find more music academics that I can get involved in at UW because of how positive this community music experience was.

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Capoeira

Attending capoeira class for my HONORS 394 class (Music and Community Artivism), I got to experience a type of dance that I had never gotten to participate in before. Capoeira involved dance movements where the dancers never touch each other, but move in a fighting style in a very slow and controlled way. I also got to learn about this history behind this Afro-Brazilian dance and music style, and got to play the instruments involved, including an atabaque and a barimbau. It helped expose me to new instruments, and made me realize that I want to find a way to express myself through movement in college, through running, climbing, or some type of dance.

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Cane Toad Paper

For my class "Wildlife in the Modern World", I got to write a paper about a controversial issue concerning wildlife. I chose to write about cane toads, which are invasive in Australia, due to my interest in frogs and toads. I got to research different methods to control the population in Australia and the impacts of the poisonous toads on native predators, including releasing small cane toads to condition taste aversion in predators, releasing alarm chemicals among toad tadpoles to stunt growth, and using native meat ants to control toad populations. Getting to research and write about my interests for school was something I had not been able to do very much in high school, and it helped me place why exactly I want to be here, at university. This also helped me realize how different it feels to research my interests from how it feels to research subjects that I am less interested in, and how engaging academics can be when I'm learning about the right topics.

Winter 2022

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Environmental Ethics

In quarantine, I started learning about moral philosophy to pass the time a bit. I figured out that I wanted to take a philosophy class in college, and decided to take environmental ethics this quarter, because it relates to moral philosophy, racial justice, and climate justice. On my first paper for the class, I did not do as well as I had hoped, and I ended up going in to office hours and revising and re-writing my second paper until I was proud of it. Pictured above is the first page of that second paper.

Arboretum

Above is the wetlands section of the arboretum. This is a place that I have been going to since I was a kid, and I went here during quarantine as an escape from the busy parts of the city. This is where I go to clear my head and to spot wildlife after classes, and it has brought me a lot of peace during times of uncertainty. During this quarter, I went here at least once a week.

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Emotions in Trans Individuals

I took the class Ways of Feeling during winter quarter. For my term paper, I chose to write about emotions in trans individuals and how they relate to one another. I am really proud of this essay, and ended up submitting it for the Slavic Excellence Prize, which I am deeply honored to say that I received! Additionally, Professor Dziwirek's class was quite engaging. I had never studied linguistics or Slavic cultures before, and her enthusiasm and curiosity were contagious.

Spring 2022

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Research Symposium

At the 2022 UW Undergraduate Research Symposium, other members of Team Squirrel and I presented their own research and our work as a team. Hannah Rickman presented her research on humeri compactness between ecotypes of squirrels, Abby Burtner presented her research about limb structure in bats compared to gliding squirrels, and Annika McFeely and I presented our research about squirrel body shape and size between ecotypes.

Painting

This quarter, I tried to make sure to take time to relax when I could. It was difficult to find time to, with my classwork, job, and research, but I spent some time exploring painting a bit more. This was a way to express creativity other than through music. When I have painted in the past, I generally focus on painting animals, so painting something more abstract also stretched myself and my interests.

Biology 220

Tests for biology 220 were quite a challenge for me. The class had a different format from the other two classes in the introductory biology sequence, and it took me a while to adjust. With the help of my study group in class and lots of studying outside of class, I ended up doing well and discovering just how interesting physiology is to me.

Autumn 2022

SICB 2023

When I attended the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) conference, my first academic conference, there was no way that I could have known just how much I would learn. While I enjoy attending classes in school, there was an unbridled excitement that I felt when learning about others’ projects at SICB that I had not experienced before. This was especially true when I could see how it connected back to my own research, or back to interesting morphological and behavioral adaptations that I had read about in my own time. Knowing that I, too, am adding to that knowledge, and that perhaps I can incite that feeling in others, motivates me to keep going in my academic career.

At the SICB conference, I presented research that Jules Padro (left), Emily Blackwell and I conducted at the American Museum of Natural history the previous summer about sexual dimorphism in the mandibles of carnivorans.

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Paper about
the Mirror Test

As an advanced elective for my major, I took a class on the biology and conservation of birds. My professor, Professor John Marzluff, gave us a lot of freedom with what we wrote about and researched for the class, which worked very well for me. I wrote a paper about the mirror test of self-recognition, something I had only read about in my own time before and that I really enjoyed getting to learn about for a class.

Paper on Squirrel Research

I wrote my first academic paper on research this quarter. It was about pattern in body shape diversity and limb length between ecotypes of squirrels (i.e., ground, tree, gliding, and chipmunk). It took significant time and energy, but ended up being accepted for publication in the journal PeerJ at the end of winter break!

Winter 2023

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Gender, Diplomacy, and Human Rights

This quarter, I took a class through the interdisciplinary honors program that focused on the implementation of and theory behind feminist foreign policies and LGBTI diplomacies. This class was most definitely not in my field, but I found it really interesting to take a deep-dive into what human rights advocacy entails, especially in the context of recent restrictions on trans rights. As a result of this class, I gained connections with organizations working for trans and intersex rights internationally.

The picture I included is of my final essay for the class, which focused on how adopting a feminist foreign policy would benefit Costa Rica.

Karshner Center Performance

Through my work at the Rhapsody Project, a community music organization focusing on anti-racism, I got the opportunity to perform with my friends at the Karshner Center in Puyallup! We researched the history behind each song we picked and performed, playing songs that celebrated Black American musicians for Black History Month.

Research

I continued research work on the project that I presented on at SICB, preparing for my presentation at UW's upcoming undergraduate symposium. At the symposium, I will be presenting on mandibular sexual dimorphism in feliforms with our updated dataset and new findings!

Spring 2023

Ad hoc project: Paper about chytridiomycosis in frogs

In a class I took on the pathobiology of emerging infectious diseases (BIOL 466), I decided to write a paper about chytridiomycosis in frogs and toads as an ad hoc project. I researched different ways that chytrid fungus is spread among frogs and toads, including through water bodies, skin-to-skin contact, the pet trade, illegal trade of amphibians, and the release of water from pet tanks into water bodies. I also researched the mechanism that chytrid fungus uses to infect frogs and toads, and researched the physiological effects of the disease.

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Research symposium

This spring, I presented my research on sexual dimorphism in the mandibles of carnivorans at the UW symposium. This was my first time presenting a poster at the UW symposium, and I found it much more fun than presenting a talk!

Heritage Arts Apprenticeship Grant

Through my job at the Rhapsody Project, I applied for the heritage arts apprenticeshop grant for funding as I explored my Jewish heritage through music. With this grant, I will learn about the history of yiddish music (including klezmer and doinas), learn more about how to make foods from my culture, and will perform at the Northwest Folklife festival next May.

Autumn 2023

Learning to use GIS

In order to work on research in a lab I wanted to work in, I had to learn how to use GIS software, so I took a class on GIS. I found it very interesting, and was excited for the opportunity to learn more research methods, even though learning to use the software ArcGIS was tedious.

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Performing at
Benaroya Hall

The Rhapsody Project held an end-of-year concert at Benaroya Hall, and I got the honor of playing there. We performed with both youth and adults from the Rhapsody Project side-by-side, and had a guest artist, Haida author and musician Sondra Segundo teach us a protest song that she wrote in her own language for the DAPL pipeline protests. We then performed this song with her.

Presenting at SICB

Right before winter quarter, I presented at the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) 2024 conference in Seattle. I presented some findings from the research that I won the Mary Gates Research Scholarship for, and got the opportunity to listen to talks about chytridiomycosis, which I hope to study in my future PhD research.

Winter 2024

Amphibian monitoring

Since I want to study frogs as a wildlife biologist, I decided to sign up as a volunteer for amphibian monitoring through Woodland Park Zoo. This takes place once a month, and my monitoring site is at the SHADOW Lake Nature Preserve. One volunteer wears waders, going in a loop around the shallow areas of each pond and lake, searching for egg masses, as well as adult and juvenille amphibians. Other volunteers mark down the latitude and longitude of each observation, as well as descriptions of the amphibians and egg masses we find.

Honors 211 final project

As a final project for Diversity in the Middle Ages, my group created a medieval fantasy character who exemplifies some aspects of diversity that are often missing from the fantasy genre. Writing our character's story and creating a watercolor depiction of her helped me explore my interests in visual art and creative writing again.

Biologging data review

In order to learn more about research methods in wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology, I got the opportunity to help a team of researchers from UCSC as they conduct a review of open data in biologging. Through this project so far, I have gotten to read a diverse range of papers that use biologging data techniques, improving my own knowledge of wildlife research methods and gaining connections in the process.

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