Living an Impact-Focused Life

What’s your Why?

I believe I was put on this earth to:

Just enjoy life as much as possible and gain/go through all kinds of life experiences (whether good or bad).

 

My purpose is to:

Bring happiness to myself and others as well as help people with what I can.

 

I believe (my core values):

That everyone deserves to live how they want to be happy.

 

The one thing I must do before I die is:

Is make my family live a happy and stable life as well as do what makes me happy.

 

My advocates and supporters all believe I:

That I will achieve something great/do great things.

 

The evil I want to eradicate in this world is:

Judgement.

 

I want to work in order to:

Make a better living for myself and my family.

 

Walk the Talk – Your How

If you are truly committed to your Why, you show it in your everyday behavior. It is all air until you do it. Working from your Why, How do you prove that you are true to your Why in all you do?

 

I always:

Try my best in my classes and try to gain experiences, so that I can get into dental school and get a good job, which will allow me to make a better life for my family.

 

I never:

Try to do things that will disappoint my family.

 

My work style is:

Working on my own time and comfort.

 

I try to treat people:

The same way that they treat me. If they don’t I will give them a couple of chances in case they had a bad day, but if their attitude towards me does not change then I will treat them the same way.

 

I approach problems by:

Thinking about them logically and critically to see how I can approach the problem to solve it or if it can be solved. Sometimes taking in other people’s opinions help coming towards a solution sooner.

 

Victories are time to:

Celebrate as well as think about what you have done well and what you can improve on.

 

If another attacks my point of view I:

Try to see where they are coming from and ask them what reasoning they have to have formed that kind of opinion.

 

If I fundamentally do not agree with what an organization or person is doing, I will:

Ignore them because they are not worth my time to argue with if they have such strong beliefs about it and do not want to change their opinion after listening to what others have to say.

 

Your Credibility – Your Whats

You have just spent some considerable time at Lehigh, and specifically in the Global Social Impact Fellowship, on many whats. Your whats include lab research, formal presentations, writing research papers, engaging with people in other cultural contexts, building prototypes, designing and building systems, raising funds, hiring employees, etc. The whats you have collected along the way are critical to your credibility when you are entering the workforce or applying to the best graduate and professional schools. They signify a credible currency to which organizations can assign value. Create a list of your Whats that are truly reflective of your Why & How.  You did these things because you believe (Why) and you acquired them in the following (How) manner. These are examples you can use in interviews.

What Have I Done	List of Experiences, Accomplishments, and Lessons Learned
Degrees, Minors, Certificates, Fellowships	In Progress: Molecular Biology major; Minors: Psychology and Marketing Mountaintop Summer Initiative Fellow Certificate
Research Experiences	–          Mountaintop/GSIF science research –          Psychology – Emotion Lab Research
Inventions and Innovations	None
(Social) Entrepreneurial Ventures	GSIF – Copra Project
Publications (Formal and Informal)	None
Formal Presentations (at Lehigh and Beyond)	Mountaintop/GSIF
Awards and External Recognition	Scholarships

 

Articulating and learning from GSIF-related Experiences. For each of these prompts, we want you to identify one and only one specific and compelling event/incident/experience/moment and identify exactly how you grew personally and professionally through that moment.

Teamwork Experience (and Lessons Learned)	I learned that it may take some time to work and see eye-to-eye with others when two different groups are thrown together unexpectedly and that teamwork can become more solid after getting to know each other better after some time.
Conflict Resolution Experience (and Lessons Learned)	No big conflicts have occurred except some miscommunications that were able to be fixed after talking about them. From those miscommunications, we learned that we need to communicate more clearly instead of assuming everyone knows the same things.
Leadership Experience (and Lessons Learned)	I have been able to take the lead in the science approach aspect by coming up with what kind of research we can do as well as putting those ideas to test through experimentations.
Dealing with Chaos, Ambiguity, and Uncertainty (and Lessons Learned)	The biggest uncertainty was finding the purpose of what I could bring into the team by working on a completely different project than what I had originally applied to. I learned that I can always come up with a purpose to do something if I put my mind into it.
Personally Challenging Experience (and Lessons Learned)	Trying to come up with experiments and execute them was personally challenging during Mountaintop since I had to do everything myself and even write the manuscript by myself while others were able to work in teams. Although it was challenging, I enjoyed being able to do the research and work on my own time and the manuscript was easier to write since I was able to know everything that I needed to write and put in the manuscript. I learned that I work best both alone and in groups, but it just depends on the circumstances to know which one is the best option.
Cross-cultural Experience (and Lessons Learned)	None
An experience that helped you connect your GSIF work to your discipline / major.	It was when I was able to do scientific research which went well with my molecular biology major.
A moment that boosted your sense of agency and self-efficacy – you felt like you can speak for yourself, get stuff done, take on the world and make it better.	When I began college, I started to feel like I could do anything I wanted because of all the opportunities that Lehigh presented us. Being away from home and by myself in college, strengthened my sense of agency and self-efficacy since I oversaw making most choices in my life.
A moment where you felt like you truly have a strong sense of purpose and belonging in this dynamic, globalized interdependent world.	A moment I felt like that was when I began doing work during mountaintop because that was the time that my part of the group was finally able to do more work after finding our purpose in the group and it felt like the research and knowledge that I grasped during that time strengthened how I saw myself being able to bring an actual change to the world and saw what I wanted to do later on in my career.