What’s your Why?

Living an Impact-Focused Life

What’s your Why?

I believe I was put on this earth to:

• Make a contribution to the society through my job I enjoy doing.

My purpose is to:

• At this moment, it is to figure out what I want to mainly be involved in throughout my life.

I believe (my core values):

• In open-mindedness, meaningful work, and love.

The one thing I must do before I die is:

• Learn as much as possible about this world.

My advocates and supporters all believe I:

• Am goal-oriented, thoughtful, and caring.

The evil I want to eradicate in this world is:

• Obliviousness (opposite of awareness).

I want to work in order to:

• Apply my gained knowledge and make a bigger impact.

 

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:

• Think about the purpose of my actions and realize why am I doing certain things
• When working on a task, assess if I enjoy doing it or what would I enjoy doing more
• Listen to others not to say something back but to try to understand their perspective

I never:

• Criticize other people’s perspectives
• Mindlessly do something

My work style is:

• Flexible as I have different classes and project I am working now. It requires me to be adaptive as I need to keep switching tasks throughout the day.

I try to treat people:

• as I would want them to treat me

I approach problems by:

• breaking down the problem and solving it piece by piece

Victories are time to:

• See the result of your own hard work and enjoy it

If another attacks my point of view I:

• Explain it is okay to have different points of view on something

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

• Explain them whatever I think is going wrong and stop collaborating with them

 

 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	Computer Science Degree
Research Experiences	GSIF
Inventions and Innovations	AQA app, water distribution system in El Manantial through EWB
(Social) Entrepreneurial Ventures	Air Quality Almaty
Publications (Formal and Informal)	AQA Paper (Analyze how cities around the world combat air pollution and find suitable solution for Almaty)
Formal Presentations (at Lehigh and Beyond)	EWB
Awards and External Recognition	Volunteer of the Trip (CSO)

 

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)	As a team, we researched the air quality issue in Almaty a lot. We were able to research in detail how air pollution affects different groups of people susceptible to poor air quality. This all was possible as we strived to be better team members through learning to effectively communicate with each other.
Conflict Resolution Experience (and Lessons Learned)	Most of the conflicts in our team were resolved effectively communicating with each other. Also accepting each other’s differences built the trust within our team and strengthened the connection between members. This in turn reduced the number of conflict situations.
Leadership Experience (and Lessons Learned)	I think every member of our team had their own leadership style. We were able to become a better team by dividing the work between everyone. Everyone had their own roles and were stepping up to lead the team according to these roles and type of work we were involved in.
Dealing with Chaos, Ambiguity, and Uncertainty (and Lessons Learned)	Our team had to deal with a lot of chaos during the Spring semester when everything went online. We had to communicate with each other more to figure out some things we needed to start doing differently since that moment.
Personally Challenging Experience (and Lessons Learned)	The very beginning of our project was pretty challenging for me because our project was new and a lot of us were not sure what exactly we wanted to achieve. Personally, I like going into the details of new ideas and it was hard for me to talk about our project in the bigger scope.
Cross-cultural Experience (and Lessons Learned)	We all had an opportunity to work in a team of people with different backgrounds. This made us more active listeners and open-minded.
An experience that helped you connect your GSIF work to your discipline / major.	I was able to apply my Computer Science skills during the process of designing the wireframe of our expert system. This experience showed me how I could apply things I learned in so many different ways to make an impact.
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.	It was the time we connected with our partner from Almaty and presented them the ideas we were working on. They liked our ideas and it made me feel more confident as they were the first people we shared our ideas with outside our team.
A moment where you felt like you truly have a strong sense of purpose and belonging in this dynamic, globalized interdependent world.	The moment when I realized I could apply my knowledge to try to solve different kind of issues in this world.