C.A.R.E Coach
leadership at Valencia College
My most memorable leadership experience happened during COVID-19 while everyone was in quarantine. At the time, I worked as only a CARE coach for Valencia College and my job was to support students both academically and non-academically. During COVID-19, everything was remote, and everyone was in quarantine, which can be very isolating; therefore, a majority of students needed more non-academic support than academic. So, to support the students, a fellow CARE coach and I worked together to create a presentation showcasing growth mindset, coping strategies, and flow. Our presentation was created based on the minds of many brilliant people and research which we later titled “The Relationship between Coping, Mindset and Flow”. Through the countless classes we presented this workshop for we were able to grow, adapt and improve this presentation into a beautiful piece.
What I Learned
I learned how to read research papers and put together a presentation based on said research. While putting the presentation together, I had to sort through and read a bunch of different research articles and studies. They were difficult to read not only because I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the terminology but also because I had never really read a research paper. It took hours of me filtering through the many different databases and finding the definitions of many words to find the perfect three studies to base the presentation on. This experience taught me many valuable lessons and I now know how to navigate databases much more smoothly along with a plethora of vocabulary that is commonly used in research and studies.
How I Applied It
A great recent example of how I was able to utilize the skills I learned was in my neurobiology class. My professor assigned us the task of finding a research article related to neurobiology, citing it, and later summarizing it. With the knowledge and skills, I learned from my previous project, I was able to complete the assignments with relative ease and earned perfect scores on each of the individual assignments. In the future, I can use the skills of navigating databases, finding primary research papers, and being able to read research papers when conducting my own research or under the guidance of someone else’s research. Ultimately benefiting me as I plan on going to medical school after I graduate from UCF. These skills will help me later on because one of the requirements for be a good medical school applicant is having research experience.
Me (right) during a classroom presentation
