Letters from the Heart
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Dear Blackhawk Women's Scholarship Committee,
Thank you so much for awarding me the prestigious honor the Blackhawk Women's Club scholarship for the 2008-2009 school years. I hope you have received the thank you notes I sent earlier in the summer!
This fall I began attending UC Berkeley, and I have been enjoying myself and my studies immensely here. I know I will continue to thrive academically as well, thanks to the support of your scholarship.
From my first moments on campus as a college student, I was filled with such excitement for what opportunities lay ahead of me.
I was literally star struck knowing that my anthropology professor had actually worked on the Catal Hoyuk site and Fort Ross archaeological sites I had read about in past school textbooks, and that his graduate instructors had participated in projects I remembered reading about in National Geographic a few months earlier. I found archaeology interesting and surprisingly relevant towards everyday life. Although I do not necessarily see myself becoming the next Indiana Jones in the very near future, I gained a great appreciation for the truths we can uncover and interpretations one can make about the past by examining the artifacts and analyzing evidence from material culture to build a picture. I was delighted when I achieved the unicorn of an A+, my first official grade at UC Berkeley!
I also enjoyed the challenges presented to me in probably my most challenging class, Western Civilizations. In this course, I had to read on average about 800 pages of translated ancient Greek, cuneiform, or Latin per week and write analytical essays comparing cross-cultural, cross-temporal, cross-stylistic, cross-political, cross-social and cross-economic attributes of ancient Near Eastern and Classical cultures. The two professors and team of graduate students chose to not explore history through a textbook, but rather through the primary documents of those time periods preserved in translated stories. So really, this course was a study of history with respect to literature, or an exercise with literature to uncover history. It was challenging to extract historical fact from legends and recorded myths, but it became exciting when I began seeing patterns and gaining insight into greater meanings. There was a lot of comparing in that class, and it always somehow had to get tied back into the bigger question of how western civilization managed to come about from all of those highly diverse and unique foundations. Although I doubt I will end up pursuing a career that so heavily bases its focus on the study of ancient cultures, I know I walked away with valuable skills in analysis and I am positive I became a better writer and thinker as a result of my participation. I know this because I walked away with the highest grade for the final exam, that was entirely essay based, and felt that I earned every ounce of that A.
Probably my most favorite class was my BioEngineering discovery course that examined the role of stem cell and genetics research in contemporary international society. Not only did I have to utilize knowledge of biology, chemistry and public policy to succeed in this debate-formatted seminar course, but I had to learn how to uncover bias and evaluate ethics in delicate situations. I am pleased to report to your club that Dr. Irina Convoy, was so impressed with my final project (discussing the use of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a model of how to correctly appropriate limited federal funds to medical research and further insure equal representation of all socio-economic situations of patients to equally receive high end treatments in the future, such as cellular regenerative therapies) that she requested I be allowed to return as an assistant facilitator to one of the graduate students this upcoming semester, even though I am only going to be a second semester first year! I hope to explore more possibilities with the biological science field, which is what I was originally thinking about in high school as a career, but I am now intrigued by the policy and management aspects of medical research as well.
The class I completed with the greatest feeling of accomplishment came from my involvement in my Education field course. Part of what I had feared about college was that I wasn't going to have the same opportunities to participate in my community because I was going to be stuck inside the snow globe of university student life. I found a window to reach out with this course, where I designed my own course, including a syllabus, gained proper permission and authorization to teach ballet (one of my greatest guardians in my maturation) to inner city kindergarteners in their afterschool program. This was a way for me to both stay in touch with the ballet I loved but chose college over and also give something to the community I now lived in. I learned a lot about personalities as well as working with different levels of discipline and maturity to achieve a common goal (explore ballet). My final paper for my participation in that field project class focused on the importance of personal interpretation in art, and how this is very prominent in the artistic aspirations of the kindergartners I had the pleasure of working with.
I also took a modern dance and theatre class through the theatre department, and a ballet class through the PE department to maintain some dancing in my life at university, and I was inspired to pursue the possibility of earning a dance minor at UCB, and expand my strict ballet background to include a more diverse array of dance genres.
Thank you so much for allowing me these opportunities with the generousness of your gift of scholarship. I hope to continue exploring different areas I find interesting in the opportunistic environment of UCB, and hopefully find my calling in life in the process. Happy Holidays to all, and thank you sincerely, again!
Alexis Krup
Thank you so much for awarding me the prestigious honor the Blackhawk Women's Club scholarship for the 2008-2009 school years. I hope you have received the thank you notes I sent earlier in the summer!
This fall I began attending UC Berkeley, and I have been enjoying myself and my studies immensely here. I know I will continue to thrive academically as well, thanks to the support of your scholarship.
From my first moments on campus as a college student, I was filled with such excitement for what opportunities lay ahead of me.
I was literally star struck knowing that my anthropology professor had actually worked on the Catal Hoyuk site and Fort Ross archaeological sites I had read about in past school textbooks, and that his graduate instructors had participated in projects I remembered reading about in National Geographic a few months earlier. I found archaeology interesting and surprisingly relevant towards everyday life. Although I do not necessarily see myself becoming the next Indiana Jones in the very near future, I gained a great appreciation for the truths we can uncover and interpretations one can make about the past by examining the artifacts and analyzing evidence from material culture to build a picture. I was delighted when I achieved the unicorn of an A+, my first official grade at UC Berkeley!
I also enjoyed the challenges presented to me in probably my most challenging class, Western Civilizations. In this course, I had to read on average about 800 pages of translated ancient Greek, cuneiform, or Latin per week and write analytical essays comparing cross-cultural, cross-temporal, cross-stylistic, cross-political, cross-social and cross-economic attributes of ancient Near Eastern and Classical cultures. The two professors and team of graduate students chose to not explore history through a textbook, but rather through the primary documents of those time periods preserved in translated stories. So really, this course was a study of history with respect to literature, or an exercise with literature to uncover history. It was challenging to extract historical fact from legends and recorded myths, but it became exciting when I began seeing patterns and gaining insight into greater meanings. There was a lot of comparing in that class, and it always somehow had to get tied back into the bigger question of how western civilization managed to come about from all of those highly diverse and unique foundations. Although I doubt I will end up pursuing a career that so heavily bases its focus on the study of ancient cultures, I know I walked away with valuable skills in analysis and I am positive I became a better writer and thinker as a result of my participation. I know this because I walked away with the highest grade for the final exam, that was entirely essay based, and felt that I earned every ounce of that A.
Probably my most favorite class was my BioEngineering discovery course that examined the role of stem cell and genetics research in contemporary international society. Not only did I have to utilize knowledge of biology, chemistry and public policy to succeed in this debate-formatted seminar course, but I had to learn how to uncover bias and evaluate ethics in delicate situations. I am pleased to report to your club that Dr. Irina Convoy, was so impressed with my final project (discussing the use of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a model of how to correctly appropriate limited federal funds to medical research and further insure equal representation of all socio-economic situations of patients to equally receive high end treatments in the future, such as cellular regenerative therapies) that she requested I be allowed to return as an assistant facilitator to one of the graduate students this upcoming semester, even though I am only going to be a second semester first year! I hope to explore more possibilities with the biological science field, which is what I was originally thinking about in high school as a career, but I am now intrigued by the policy and management aspects of medical research as well.
The class I completed with the greatest feeling of accomplishment came from my involvement in my Education field course. Part of what I had feared about college was that I wasn't going to have the same opportunities to participate in my community because I was going to be stuck inside the snow globe of university student life. I found a window to reach out with this course, where I designed my own course, including a syllabus, gained proper permission and authorization to teach ballet (one of my greatest guardians in my maturation) to inner city kindergarteners in their afterschool program. This was a way for me to both stay in touch with the ballet I loved but chose college over and also give something to the community I now lived in. I learned a lot about personalities as well as working with different levels of discipline and maturity to achieve a common goal (explore ballet). My final paper for my participation in that field project class focused on the importance of personal interpretation in art, and how this is very prominent in the artistic aspirations of the kindergartners I had the pleasure of working with.
I also took a modern dance and theatre class through the theatre department, and a ballet class through the PE department to maintain some dancing in my life at university, and I was inspired to pursue the possibility of earning a dance minor at UCB, and expand my strict ballet background to include a more diverse array of dance genres.
Thank you so much for allowing me these opportunities with the generousness of your gift of scholarship. I hope to continue exploring different areas I find interesting in the opportunistic environment of UCB, and hopefully find my calling in life in the process. Happy Holidays to all, and thank you sincerely, again!
Alexis Krup
