Aaron Reyes
Spring
2023
Peer Educator Retreat 2023
In the winter I had applied to be a peer educator for the Honors Program and got in! Part of being a peer educator involved going on a 3 day retreat with the rest of the peer educators as well as our advisor/Honors 397 instructor Nadra. I was very hesitant and nervous going into it as I have had bad experiences with prior retreats. I was really dreading it at first especially because leaving on Friday meant I had to miss another school event that I really wanted to attend. Little did I know how much I truly needed this retreat not just to build stronger relationships with my fellow PE's but as a growing opportunity for myself. Upon arrival I made the decision to go into it with a positive mindset and try to have a good time. That whole weekend was one of the best experiences I have ever had. Not only was I surrounded by like minded individuals but by loving, caring, and genuine people. I was able to learn community building skills, leadership skills, and how to fully get out of my comfort zone. This retreat really helped build a strong foundation for the relationship between all of the PE's that I feel would have not fully been there if we had not had the retreat. I am very thankful to the Honors Program for allowing me to have the opportunity to be part of such an amazing group of people that I am proud to call some of my best friends now.
A.C.E. Conference 2023
With the help of my fraternity brothers I was able to find another Latine focused RSO on campus. M.E.C.h.A. stands for Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán. This RSO was founded to primarily serve the Chicano community but something that stood out about the on here at UW was that they did not specifically focus on the Chicano community but on all hispanic and Latine people. In May we were able to host the A.C.E. Conference where we invited many hispanic/Latine high school students around the area that were at risk of not graduating or not motivated to attend college. The purpose of this conference was to allow these students to see that there is a community waiting for them in college and that there was many people who looked like them that attended universities. We included many activities from a campus tour, different workshops, and a Latine/hispanic RSO spotlight that showcased all the different Latine RSO's on campus. It was an event that took a lot of planning but the reward of seeing all the students excited about the possibility of going to college made it all worth it. This is an event that I am extremely proud to be a part of and am looking forwarded to expanding this conference in the following years.
SOC 110 Podcast
This quarter I took my first sociology class and coincidently found a fellow friend that I had not seen since middle school. We got to rekindle our friendship and she also introduced me to her best friend. This class was a very interesting class to me but seemed a bit easy to me because many of the concepts to me felt like it was just common sense. It took me a while to realize that not all of this information was common sense for everyone and that not everyone in the class including my professor was a POC. That changed my perspective on how important this class was for many of the other students. For our final we got the opportunity to create a group project on an issue of our choice. Considering my group was all POC we decided to work on a project that we all were able to relate to. We chose to do a podcast on the effects of systemic racism on POC in predominantly white institutions (in our case universities). It was the first time I had ever created a podcast and it felt very natural to talk about. We all mainly talked about our own personal experiences and our transitions from high school to college and how the environment and people here had a huge effect on it. We got 100/100 on this assignment and I honestly felt very proud about it because it showed me how my own experiences are worth a perfect grade. I am glad we got the opportunity to create a podcast because it helped show how there is many different ways of learning and sometimes a podcast is a perfect way for that.