My second year at UW was a lot of fun, and it was filled with more sendiness than fails! I started working as a writing tutor at the Odegaard Writing and Research Center, and I also got involved in a support program for international students at the OWRC. I also applied to be an intern at the Washington State Senate! At first I was waitlisted for the internship, but then I was offered a position working in Senator Patty Kuderer’s office! I loved the job and excelled at it, to the point where I was promoted and got an intern of my own! Also, through this experience I wrote a research paper on a bill the Senator wrote. This paper, about the juvenile justice system, enabled me to win a Library Research Award! By the end of my second year, I was considering working at the Washington State Senate upon graduation.
One of the biggest changes of my second year occurred during the summer. Up until this point, I was absolutely enamoured with my LSJ courses. As I was thinking of my summer plans, I decided that I didn’t want to do a fancy, but unpaid, internship, so I took at environmental science class that was actually a 9-day backpacking trip in Olympic National Park. I loved it so much (It combined environmental science and justice in an interdisciplinary and engaging way) that I decided to minor in Environmental Science and Resource Management! Later in the summer I also took a class at Monroe Correctional Center. It had been my goal to take a prison-based course since I had gotten into the LSJ major, and I was finally doing it. I found that it was very interesting and rewarding to take a class alongside prisoners; however, I also found my interests straying more from criminal justice reform/abolition and more towards climate justice.