Week Five: What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual, and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future?

My research mentor, Hina, has been instrumental in shaping my research experience. She is definitely someone who I look up to— she has one of my dream jobs and is highly dedicated,  hard working, and passionate about protecting human rights in national security law. She is also a fantastic leader. Something I’ve learned about leadership from her example is that leaders have a vision. Leaders have a vision for what they believe to be a better future.

When I think of a leader, I usually think of words like “delegating,” “strategic thinking,” “communication,” or “innovation.” All of these ARE characteristics of a leader, but they leave out the passionate part, the core motivation that keeps leaders up at night— the vision that a leader has for how the world could be better, and how to get there.

Hina works tirelessly to represent and advocate for those who have been wrongly detained by the U.S. government, those who have been presumed to be terrorists or disloyal, and those who have been targeted, with their constitutional rights violated.  This is because she views the U.S. executive branch’s actions since 9/11 as expansive and ultimately harmful, especially for communities of color. In her leadership, she is guided by the belief that things should change, that Americans must have their rights protected, and that endless war-making and war-based measures will degrade democracy and inclusion at home. I am inspired by that vision and I hope that I can take after her  when I enter my career.

Week Four: What challenges and/or difficulties have you encountered and how did you go about resolving them? Speak to a specific challenge you have encountered and some of the ways that you tackled the problem.

One of the main challenges I’m dealing with is learning and familiarizing myself with a new landscape of scholarship— legal scholarship. There are unfamiliar terms, rules, doctrines, etc that I’ve encountered and had to teach myself about. It’s difficult to dive into a field that you do not have experience in, but it also serves as an opportunity to widen your breadth and knowledge. Usually what I do when I am stuck on a concept is I reach out to my research mentor and ask. But I also think there is something special about finding something out on your own. For example, last week I was reading an article about the sentencing of those convicted of material support offenses, and I didn’t really understand what “material support” meant. What qualifies as “providing material support to terrorist groups” and how can it lead to a sentence from thirty years to life, for a crime that would otherwise result in a sentence of around five years? These questions prompted me to extensively research and teach myself about material support offenses and the Terrorist Enhancement sentencing guidelines, as well as the Treasury’s role in designating certain entities as terrorist groups.

Has your research or work in a community to this point introduced you to any new fields or topics that are of interest to you? 

This research experience has interested me in the field of national security law. I’ve known for a couple years now that I want to pursue a career in foreign policy. But I’ve thought that I would do foreign policy analysis (i.e. doing research and writing and advocacy in a think tank or other kind of non-government organization). Now, with this project, I’m realizing that there’s an entire field of national security law that uses law as an instrument for arguing certain national security policy changes. I didn’t know that I could actually *practice* law in a way that would intersect with my interests. I am now considering going to law school because of this research experience. I would love to use a law background to analyze the legality of certain measures (for example, indefinite detention, torture, war crimes, extrajudicial killings), or even have a direct impact on the victims of these policies and work towards accountability.

Week Three:

A typical day of my internship starts with  logging onto the editor's meeting, where we talk pitches, current events, and SEO for about an hour and a half. Next, my primary editor will email me an assignment for the week, on which I'll try to start preliminary research. This involves looking through other publications, scanning what's already up on the Honeysuckle sight, and just a simple Google search. If the piece requires interviews, I'll research the interviewee extensively beforehand and make a plan of interview questions.

If this doesn't fill my day, I'll start writing the piece and email a draft to the editor. Typically, a piece undergoes three to four rounds of editing before the final draft is published to the website, and then further publicized on social media. For the multimedia element of this ost, I've included a link to my most recent article for Honeysuckle's Pride Issue:  https://honeysucklemag.com/7-lgbtq-comedians-snl-crashing/

Week Five:
What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual, and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future?

This summer, I am very grateful to have the opportunity to work in-person in the lab, broaden my horizons and learn new lab techniques. I have been working with a postdoctoral researcher in the lab, who has helped advise and guide my project. From sharing/discussing published literature to learning how to image with confocal microscopy, I have learnt more about how to lead a project and the planning that is required with lab bench work as the plants take time to grow during their individual cycles and we must account for how we can alternate with imaging and analysis to maximize our research efforts and manage these time-sensitive tasks.