Use this space to introduce yourself to your fellow H100 PEs before our Spring

seminar begins. Share whatever you think is relevant to our work together as a
community -- your major(s), minor(s), favorite hang out spots on campus,
hobbies, why you are excited about being a Peer Educator, etc...
We look forward to getting to know you all!
Hi! Im Russ. Im a sophomore. My major is Environmental health. Environmental health has
very little to do with environmental protection, its more the study of how the environment
affects human health. What I hope to find with this major is work stopping and preventing
infectious diseases and controlling the environmental factors that promote their spread. Id
rather change policy than do research, which is, like, the reason Im not majoring in
microbiology.
Both my parents have biology backgrounds. My dad is a biology professor. My mom used to
be a microbiology professor, before she went back to school to become a nurse. Now she
teaches nursing clinical skills at WSU---full circle. After eating dinner with my parents for 15
years or so, both my brother and I are desensitized to very gross discussions about human
physiology and medical abnormalities.
Im from Yakima, I have a love-hate relationship with coffee, and I have two cats which I
didnt discover I was allergic to until I moved away to college. Turns out constantly having a
runny nose isnt normal.
Actually, I didnt go to college after high school right away. In between I was an exchange
student in Taiwan for a year. Taiwan was kind of a surprise, because I had taken Spanish in
high school. (The program didnt let us pick countries.) I was forced to start learning
Chinese from scratch and by the end of the year I had learned quite a bit. What I didnt
learn was my cat allergy, because it turns out it was a more a like pet allergy. Both my host
families had dogs, so I continued thinking runny noses were normal.
In college I finally learned that runny noses arent a permanent part of my life. I also
continued taking Chinese. My year in Taiwan had been lots of fun and definitely worth it, but
it had also been aweird year. Because of all the weirdness, I was initially planning to
return to studying Spanish at the UW, but then I discovered that 1. The Spanish placement
test at the UW costs money, but Chinese placement is free 2. The US government really,
really, really wants people to learn Chinese and offers study abroad scholarships for
students studying Chinese. These two material motivations combined to convince me to
take at least one more quarter. Besides if I didn't continue taking Chinese, what would I
have to show for my year abroad?
My motivations for continuing Chinese study were not pure but, after taking one Chinese
class at the UW I decided that I actually had liked Taiwan and Chinese culture and language.
What I hadnt always liked was being a high school exchange student. I kept taking Chinese
classes last year and this year and continued enjoying them. I went to China last summer
on a scholarship and Im going back again this summer on a different scholarship.
I still havent figured out how Chinese and all this travel will fit into my eventual career
goals, (It might not), But Im enjoying it. Also, relevant to career or not, at this point my
connection to China/Taiwan has become an important part of who I am.
At the house I'm living at this year, you can get out onto the roof from my room.

Sometimes, often late at night, I go out onto my roof and play guitar. I taught myself guitar
last year, so I'm not very good, but guitar is one of my very favorite ways of procrastinating,
so I don't really care how it sounds.
I'm looking forward to meeting everyone and also to teaching honors 100 with you all in the
fall! :)

What did you learn from the the mini-teach? What worked? What would you change?
What did you see a peer do well that you would incorporate into your teaching?
I way overestimated the amount of time it would take to teach the knot. Part of this was
because I was expecting that I would teach the entire group, so I chose a knot that was
relatively simple. That way I'd have to work individually with those who were struggling to
tie the knot. A bigger surprise was how quickly my audience learned. I showed my fellow
peer educators how to tie the knots once and then Viola! They knew how to do it. I held off
on teaching more complicated knots because I was budgeting too much time for the knot. If
I were to teach this skill again I would choose a more complicated (and more useful!) knot
and hopefully come much closer to filling the allotted time.
What I saw that went well was Erika was super mucho prepared and brought a picture guide
about how to peal a banana and bananas to practice on. It was clear that she was prepared
and had thought about how to teach the material. I plan to copy her level of preparation
when making my lesson plans.

How have you created a sense of community for yourself on the UW campus? Where
are the places you've felt most at home? How did you get involved there?
Last year my 7 roommates were very nice people, but even the most social of them was a
prefer-to-be-alone kind of person. For whatever reason we didn't really connect. I also lived
in Mercer hall which was designed to be apartment living. Mercer court would have been
great if I was looking for privacy, but the doors in halls were always shut, so it was hard to
meet people outside of your cluster. The result of this living situation was my dorm is where
I slept. That probably wouldn't have been a barrier and I probably would have knocked on
doors or something if I hadn't found community in someone else's dorm.
My first day at the UW I went to the cafeteria in another room and sat next to Drake. When
I first met Drake I wasn't impressed. He seemed too smooth, too eager to be cool, and way
too likely to drop you when he decided you weren't cool enough for him. We ate dinner in a
big group of people and I could tell I didn't meet his minimum. I shook his hand and
thought I'd never see him again.
A couple days later I ran into Drake On the way to some Dog Days event. He and his
roommate were going, so we ended up walking together. We started talking. Maybe I'd been
wrong about him. I decided to give him a second chance.
We spent most of the rest of Dog Dayz together and continued hanging out for the rest of
the year. It turned out Drake wasn't as crazy as I thought, but he did have an incredible
talent for meeting new people and making new friends. He always invited me along when
making new friends and always made sure to introduce me. We became good friends and
his friends became my friends. I eventually became an honorary member of the Terry/

Lander dorm. I spent most of my free time last year either hanging out Drake or the friends
I had met through him and got accepted into that community.
His friendships always followed the same pattern: the other person had some initial
hesitation and then Drake would miraculous find some point of shared hobby or interest or
connection over which they could bond. I found out later that this was because Drake is a
compulsive liar. He lies not out of meanness, but because he loves finding some shared
interest with a new person.
Eventually, Drake would burn a lot of bridges and stop being close friends with most of his
new close friends. It was sad to watch and it was even more sad to watch the same drifting
apart happen to our friendship. We aren't as close as we used to be, but I am still friends
with the people I met through Drake. Even though we aren't as close, Drake will always be a
special friend for the community he brought me into. My life would be a lot lonelier if I
hadn't met him.
I think that, at least for the freshman year of college, communities are built primarily
around the dorms you live in. If you live off campus, or don't connect with your dorm it's
hard to find a community. It's also hard to enter into an already established community built
around the dorms. An example would be: Despite being in honors, I feel that I still really
haven't been accepted into the Hagget/poplar honors housing communities. Granted, I had
community elsewhere, so I never full-time focused on entering, but I feel like it would have
take full time effort or a very charismatic person to welcome me in. It's not like people are
unfriendly, (quite the opposite in fact!) but it's hard to come into an already established
community from the outside and play catch-up on learning everyone's names and
relationship webs. I got unlucky in that I ended up in a dorm with weak community
structure, but I feel incredibly lucky that I met a charismatic friend who brought me into a
community from the outside.

Reflect on your group teaching experience. How did your teaching session go? What
surprised you about the experience? What went well? What would you do differently
if you were to teach the same lesson again? How does it compare to your mini-teach
and your reflections on that experience?
The teaching session went very well! Everyone did their part, the pieces fit together
smoothly, everything that had to get covered got covered and we timed our session
perfectly.
What surprised me was my roommate calling me during the middle of the presentation. One
big thing I wouldn't repeat is have my phone go off. Another thing I would do if I were to
reteach this presentation is go through the presentation as a group in order to get our
timings right and remove redundant information. Not that we had problems with either of
those things, but the potential was there.
Compared to the mini-teach this went much better. I was much better prepared. The timing
worked out better.
Also, unfortunately, I chose to teach a mini-teach topic that I knew how to teach well, but
not a mini teach topic that I was particularly interested in. This time I was teaching material
that was useful and relevant to me. (While, preparing for the group teach I re-learned much
of what I had forgotten about the honors course requirements. The difference between the

two teaches reminded me of the importance of making sure you the teacher have found a
way to present information in a way that you personally find useful and relevant.
Reflect on our retreat. What did you learn about your leadership style?
Additionally, share one idea or suggestion from the PE community that you now
want to incorporate into your class in the fall. Feel free to share any other
thoughts you have following our time together.
The basketball personality test was super interesting for a lot of reasons. I'd pretty much
already known that my personality was driver. What was more interesting was hearing the
descriptions of other people's personalities. Both of my parents and definitely my brother
would fall into the same basketball quadrant. I think since that's the personality I grew up
with on some deep unexplored psychological level I assume that everyone is a driver. I think
a very useful extension of that exercise would be how a discussion of how the different
personalities should communicate to each other and avoid misunderstandings. I don't
imagine this will be a problem in the classroom, but it would have been very helpful when
dealing with roommates and other personal relationships earlier this year.
I really like the idea of a required reading. I think it's important to balance the fun get to
know you parts of the class with more serious things. Adding a book, especially one about
such weighty things as death, disease, and structural violence, will enhance the honors 100
curriculum by adding another serious thing. I happen to be biased in my interest in the
material in the book, so I don't know what general interest level is, but I think the book
does a very good job, of introducing death, despair, and what can be done to a general
audience.
Something that I kind of sort of want to incorporate into my curriculum, probably towards
the end of the quarter, is that basketball personality test. I think it would be lots of fun for
them to be able to see their classmates personalities. Perhaps as an icebreaker.
As far as the retreat goes, I thought it was a wonderful location, lots of fun and well
planned. Definitely worth doing again!

Please use this space to post an introduction we can share with incoming students
on the H100 website. Please also include a picture of yourself to go along with it!

Hi, My name is Russ.

I'm from Yakima, WA. What I miss the most about Yakima are the wide open spaces, blues
skies, and all the fresh fruit. Now I live in Seattle. What I like about Seattle is the big city
and all the new and diverse people and opportunities.
I'm a junior majoring in environmental health. After graduation I hope to do infectious
disease control sort of work. Immediately after graduation I want to serve in the Peace
Corps. I hope to do that in West Africa, so I should probably start taking French. Might start
that next year. It'll probably interfere with my plan to get a chemistry minor, but I think
taking a year or so of French would be super interesting and worth the loss.
A fun fact about me is that I have a brother who also attends the UW. Sometimes when
people meet us both at that same time, we try to have them guess if he's older, younger, or
a twin. I won't reveal the answer, but if you ever see someone who looks like me only tall
and with red hair be sure to say Hi!
Looking forward to getting to know everyone and being your Peer educator!