Over the course of the past month, I've encountered a host of second year Trinity students who've begun their journey into exploring opportunities through college, whether it's through research, extracurriculars, journals, or scholarship exams. If I were to speak to them about what it is from the assortment of options that students at this college have that will most dramatically impact the trajectory of their university experience for the better, I can state, without a doubt, that being a Laidlaw Scholar would be my answer.
I signed up to do Laidlaw spurred off of an interest cultivated by a scholar two years above me, who said that an interest in leadership and research and a charming research proposal was just what I needed to apply. A month and a half later, I found myself absolutely drenched by the rain on a gloomy February morning, standing outside the Career Service office to be interviewed regarding my application. I was nervous, but excited-- a chance to research something deeply personal to me like women's human rights in a policy context, compiled with the opportunity to receive leadership training and work, seemed like it was a dream. The scholarship turned out to be all of that, and more that I could have never imagined.
My first set of learnings from this last year and a half are the more obvious ones. I, and my fellow scholars, undertook a research project, and later an opportunity to be leaders in action. In my research project, I learned how to read on and around a topic, collect, synthesize and communicate a host of literature, improve my data collection and processing skills, critically evaluate existing literature and resources and even translate from Turkish to English to create my own dataset of recorded femicides in Turkey from 2018 to 2022. In my LiA, I picked up a wide variety of office-related and education-field-oriented skills: sending networking emails, organising meetings amongst myself and my fellow scholars, providing feedback sheets, taking notes to evaluate guest speakers, invigilating existing classrooms, designing marketing presentations, and drafting a report for an education program for students to learn skills in music production and technological innovation that I developed the name and slogan for by hand. Simply these skills in of themselves are invaluable and demonstrate knowledge that most undergraduate students can only access either via research opportunities or internships. The opportunity to experience both sides of the professional sphere in one program in an experience I will always feel deeply grateful for.
The other, and, in my opinion, more impactful learnings from this program had to do with soft skills around being a leader. It is not often that students in their early 20s get to sit in a room and try things like doing public speaking exercises, discussing the receival of criticism, engaging with accounts of empathy in the workplace from a host of public speakers and from one another, and learning from everyone that came across my path, whether it be my advisors, mentors, or fellow scholars that I worked and grew with during the program. The premise that a leader is a lifelong learner, a listener, and a grower were things that truly embedded themselves into my experience over the course of the first summer, all of the workshops and opportunities that took place in between, and my LiA. I believe Laidlaw is also such a powerful program because of the community that gets formed in the process. I am honoured to leave with new people in my life, in particular my fellow scholars both in my university and those that I worked with in my LiA, who are forward-thinking, ambitious, determined, and compassionate leaders. I hope to continue to know them and of their successes all throughout my lifetime.
One of the greatest tools I have managed to develop during my time as a scholar is a general feeling of self-efficacy in not only both the academic and professional world, but also as a leader in both of these fields. I felt as though my passion for the subject I researched and later the area I worked in, combined with my efforts and patience over a slightly longer-term project, demonstrated a level of capability that I did not know I could show. I even began to demonstrate independent problem-solving capabilities. I saw that there was no existing English translation of a Turkish database, so I translated it myself. I learned that there were missing cases on the femicide database that were instead reported on the national news, so I hand-logged the missing cases into my translated, amateur Excel sheet. I noticed small inefficiencies in my LiA workspace, so I organised a feedback form with my fellow scholars to deliver to the staff of the organisation I worked with. These are things I don't think I would have trusted myself to do and do well, but realizing that sometimes you are the person that needs to create the solution is both a terrifying and empowering feeling. Mottos like 'do it scared' truly only embedded themselves during my time as a scholar, and I am so proud of my growth in applying skills I didn't even know I had over the course of the program.
I know that when I look back at my university experience that this program and what I have gotten out of it will be a crucial part of the reminiscences of my time at Trinity. Being a Laidlaw scholar has been an honour and a privilege. I am beyond excited to apply the assortment of skills I have developed as a Laidlaw Scholar into my future ventures, whatever they may be.