1. How do you define personal/academic/
professional success?
I define personal success as the achievement of a general sense of well-being, through meaningful relationships, and a healthy lifestyle, encompassing both physical and mental health.
According to me, academic success means the achievement of the highest possible grades, keeping one's current skill level, time commitments, strengths and weaknesses in mind. Above all, I define academic success as constant intellectual and skill growth.
Professional success means performing well and growing in the professional environment of one's choice, while maintaining a good work-life balance.
2. What type of skills would you like to develop before graduating to maximize your personal/academic/professional success?
For personal success, I would like to develop better interpersonal communication skills, learn to lead a more active lifestyle, and develop more effective stress-management skills.
With regard to academic success, I would like to build stronger relationships with my professors and develop solid analytical and quantitative skills.
To succeed professionally, I think digital literacy is extremely important. As an Arts student, I feel that while I have honed my writing and analytical skills, there is a dearth of opportunities to learn useful quantitative and software skills. Moreover, while independent work is integral to some professions, I think team building exercises/group projects would be useful across departmental and faculty lines.
3. Which stream are you most excited about and why?
While the streams do overlap in some aspects, the "Discovery" stream stands out the most to me. The stream definition is "promotes innovation, creative thinking, and responsible decision making in a variety of contexts". This stream definition appeals to me because it encourages taking action, and perhaps building something new through acquired problem solving and creative thinking abilities. It involves risk taking, and the element of play, which is extremely important to foster creativity. According to me, the "Knowledge Creation" phase of this stream will be the most interesting, and I can't wait to see what participants come up with!
