As part of the transition to Digication, Portfolio is going away! Portfolio will be fully decommissioned on July 1, 2024. As of July 1, 2023, there will be a new content freeze in Portfolio. You will not be able to add new pieces of content to your personal or organizational Portfolio. Existing content is still editable. Please continue to migrate your existing content from Portfolio to Digication. For more information about Digication, click here. For a discussion of options for transitioning your content on Portfolio, click here. To learn more about using Digication in your courses, click here.
  • Personal Reflection

    During this process of reflection, I have come across some ideas or situations that do not fit into the Career Exploration or Coursework category. I know I want to include them in my public good identity and my future career, but right now I am not sure where they will fit into that picture. In the spirit of not knowing and of embracing the blurriness of my future, I have reflected on these items and included artifacts below.

  • "The Most Interesting Thing Ever"

    Lina, my Spanish professor in the fall, said something to me that made me stop and think. We were meeting in her office to discuss some concerns I had about keeping up with the speaking portion of the class. I admitted that I was intimidated by the very experienced Spanish speakers in the class. She said something like, “Kelly, don’t worry about the way everyone else is speaking. Getting comfortable speaking a language can be very awkward at first, and it takes practice. When you respond to a question in class, just remember: whatever you say in Spanish (and it could be a really trivial thing), I will listen like you are saying the most interesting thing ever spoken.” I have often thought about what she said, and I’d like to employ that philosophy more often in my life. I’d like to listen to others as if what they’re saying is the most interesting thing ever.

  • Value: Open-mindedness

    I don’t think anyone would say that they want to be more close-minded, so this point is kind of obvious. But something my professor said the other day in Race and Popular Culture class made me think of open-mindedness and defensiveness in a different way. We were talking about racism and why we get uncomfortable and defensive when talking about prejudice and oppression. My professor provided an analogy. He said that if he was walking around with a booger on his face and someone came up to him and said, “Hey man you have a booger on your face” he would respond with “Oh I didn’t realize, thank you so much for not letting me walk into that meeting with a booger on my face! I really appreciate you letting me know.” Yet, if someone calls us out and says, “Hey man, what you said was kind of racist” we feel personally attacked and defensive. Why is that? Why don’t we say, “Thank you for helping me out! I’m glad I didn’t go the rest of my life saying this phrase that is actually racist.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately and how it applies to being open-minded in general.

  • Holistic View of Healthcare

    Google defines holistic as "characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole" and "characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just symptoms of disease." 

    My friend Hannah is majoring in Psychology and applying for an ACE grant to do research about how cultural background affects mental health on the DU campus. A few weeks ago we were talking about the ways mental health can be affected by race, ethnicity, gender, and even zip code. She is really passionate about mental health, but I found my mind wandering to general health. I was looking at the world and medicine in a different way than I did a year ago.

    She and I talked about the social determinants of health and how the intersection of different identities can contribute to health and comfortability seeking care in a college setting, not just for mental health services but also for physical health. I could see my different classes coming together to form a different view of the world. My Global Health class intersected with my Race and Popular Culture class and even Organic Chemistry. I knew when we were talking that I didn’t know what route I would take, whether it be medicine or public health or even law, but I knew I wanted to incorporate this more holistic view of health into whatever career I choose.

  • Get Creative!

    I’m taking more credit hours this quarter and have been reflecting on how I’ve dealt with challenging situations in the past and how I want to go about planning for this quarter’s course load. I thought about how, in the past, I’ve tried to get creative. Here are a few things I like to do to make it fun:

    • I brew my favorite coffee.

    • If I'm at home in IL, I let my dogs up on the couch with me while I work. (Below is my sister employing that method with our dog Buddy)

    • I call my sister on Skype and stay on the line with her for hours while I work. (In the below example, we happen to be wearing matching hats)

    • When I need to do a lot of reading for a class, and if the weather is nice, I set up a hammock on campus and read there. I have been doing this a lot lately for my God & Giving class reading, and it doesn't feel like work. 

     

    I want to continue finding ways to make things more fun and less stressful for myself in my future years as a student and in my career.

This portfolio last updated: 06-Jun-2022 8:12 PM