Transitioning To The New Normal: Let’s Be Nicer To Ourselves
by Kuhu Sharma
It’s been 7 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, and approximately 47 minutes. Yes, you know exactly what I’m referring to. When we sat at home the first day, I doubt any of us anticipated that we’d be in the same position 7 months later. We’ve seen the passing of spring, the rise and fall of summer, and the gradual growth of fall. We’ve learned things about ourselves, we’ve learned things about others, our relationships have changed, we’ve learnt a TikTok dance or two; the list of things we’ve learned and done is endless. For me, the best thing I’ve learned is how to give myself a second chance.
The semester of Spring 2020 was a whirlwind. Freshly promoted to being a SWE officer, I felt both giddy with excitement & timidly unprepared. The High School Engineering Program had been placed in my and my similarly new co-coordinator Katherine’s care, with the expectation we would make one of UC Berkeley SWE’s longest lasting programs run smoothly if not even better. This program, that spans 10 weeks & introduces female-identifying students to the various fields of engineering and mentors them on a technical project, required months of planning & our early Saturday mornings throughout the semester. It went as expected until March 7th. What was personally my last week living a “regular” life was also the highlight of the program: the HSEP session in which we had organized a tour of UC Berkeley’s state of the art design space, the Jacobs Makerspace. The experience was captivating, but was darkly underscored by the fact that nearly half of our cohort failed to show up. Some of the missing students attended schools where parents or teachers had tested positive for the virus-that-shall-not-be-named, and others were afraid of coming into the disease hotspot that is a college campus for fear of contracting it.
After that week, we moved to Zoom. And those first few meetings were awkward. We weren’t equipped with Zoom Pro accounts, so we had to ask a UC Berkeley EECS TA to let us use her personal Zoom meeting Room to ensure we weren’t kicked out every 40 minutes. The students, who had just started coming out of their shells and getting to know one another in person, now sat behind screens with cameras and microphones off. Some of our mentors dropped out of the program, saying that they weren’t able to handle moving projects online. The speakers would start out speaking animatedly about their fields, and end asking for even a miniscule amount of engagement. My co-coordinator Katherine & I were sending out flurries of emails, rescheduling speakers, recruiting new mentors, and attempting to communicate the best we could with everybody involved. All in all, our high expectations fell flat as soon as we moved online. Ultimately, at the end of the program and the semester, I was disappointed in my performance.
Our next iteration of HSEP was to be in Fall 2020, and it was to be completely online. Though I still didn’t feel confident with how our previous session had gone, I decided that with an entire summer’s worth of preparation and no foreseeable sudden developments, this program was bound to be better than the last. My new co-coordinator, Ashley, was a mentor for the Spring session and a HSEP alum from Spring 2018. Armed with our previous online experience, we spent months brainstorming new ways to make HSEP more engaging. At that point, we knew what had worked well and what hadn’t, and made some drastic changes accordingly:
- Since we weren’t constrained by locale anymore, we expanded our recruitment of students. Our cohort is now comprised of 29 students from 6 different US states, Canada, and the United Kingdom!
- We knew that projects with fundamental engineering skills like CAD software, coding, and creating flow diagrams would be easier to implement online as compared to hands-on constructive projects, so we recruited mentors with that in mind. Our mentors Aashna, Jin, Kaitlyn, and Kavya now support the students on a higher level with their curriculum.
- Since transportation wasn’t an issue, we were able to bring in amazing speakers like top UC Berkeley professors, esteemed SWE alumni, and experienced people from industry. Brought in by Ashley, they provided irreplaceable wisdom and a new level of quality to HSEP. Their presentations have been amazing introductions into their fields.
- And we tackled our biggest challenge, student engagement, with a three-pronged approach:
- Slack: We created a space for students to connect outside HSEP, giving them the opportunity to be able to discuss HSEP & even unrelated content with fellow students, speakers, mentors and us.
- Games: Games like Among Us, skribble.io, and Codenames were essential in breaking the ice & having students take advantage of being online to make friends. In a program where many are new to STEM and it’s easy to feel alienated, having something familiar goes a long way.
- Relating the HSEP curriculum to their lives: On Zoom, it’s easy to fall behind and get confused. By making the curriculum easier to understand (though we did keep the rigor the same), students are now able to stay engaged, pipe up whenever they want, and ask questions to the amazing speakers and student organizations we bring in.
We’re currently 7 weeks into our 10-week program for the Fall semester, and I can thoroughly say that it is shaping up to be a resounding success! Ashley and I are currently in discussions with other universities to expand our online program. Some of our students have even expressed interest in creating a HSEP community where we can continue sharing resources and maintaining the bonds we forged after the program wraps up.
I’ll be honest. At the end of the Spring HSEP session, I was thoroughly scared that Fall would be a repeat of the awkwardness that transpired when Spring went online. I nearly didn’t sign on to coordinate this session, because I was afraid that that result was the byproduct of my efforts. When it came time to decide if I would, I remembered the time when I was 13 years old and thought I had failed a test. The school said they would post the names of people who had passed outside their office, so when the day came and I couldn’t find my name, I was distraught. At first, I thought it was the beginning of the end, that I would never make it in high school, that I should just stop trying and quit. But my dad ended up sitting me down to make sure I didn’t think I was a complete failure just for failing a singular test. He reminded me that the test wasn’t the ultimate thing that I had to pass in order to succeed at life.That convinced me to give myself a second chance to relearn the material. Even if I failed that test, I’d be in better shape for the next one.
The end of the story is that I went back the next day and ended up finding my name (turns out, I was looking at the wrong sheet the entire time), but I realized that what my dad had said was some pretty valuable advice. To give ourselves another shot is to reaffirm our belief in ourselves, even when the circumstances around us can be dire and unsympathetic. There will always be things that don’t go according to our plan, especially during a pandemic. What’s important is that even if we fall short one day, we can get another chance to do better the next. So if we don’t eat healthy, or aren’t productive, or our goals just plain fail, that’s ok. We need to start treating ourselves better, because we always have the opportunity to grow.
Now that I look back at the past 7 months, I’m glad I remembered my dad’s advice and signed on for the Fall 2020 semester of HSEP, because I was able to be one of my own biggest unconditional supporters and demonstrate that self-care mentality to myself. As the pandemic continues, and even in the years after, I hope that we all can cement our status as unconditionally supporting ourselves, because knowing that at the very least, you’re in your own corner, can sometimes make all the difference.
