Quinn Murry

Honors 101 Section BB

October 10, 2020

Assignment #2: Who Are You?

My path to The University of Washington and the interdisciplinary honors program was
riddled with a mix of successes and rejections, joys and disappointments, accomplishments, and
failures. The University of Washington was, for the entirety of my academic career, not my first-
choice school. By the time I entered senior year, a, confident –to a fault– senior, I still held the
school in lower standing than I should have. It was familiar, and as such it was viewed as a
common school. Nine months later, after having written a dozen applications, been rejected by
many, waitlisted at several more, and accepted into a handful, I was left weighing my options.
Balancing my expectations, goals, ambitions, and unsubstantiated stigma with my financial
reality and that of COVID-19 I narrowed my options down to three schools, all on the west
coast–in case I got ill while at school. The UW of Washington was less expensive, closer– a
concern of my parents–, and as I had begun to appreciate after more in-depth research, would
provide me with the same degree of education (if not better in some programs) so long as I put in
the necessary steps. The Interdisciplinary Honors Program was an added benefit. I, long
infatuated with biological sciences, had for the past three years of my life been possessed by the
notion of pursuing a degree in those sciences. All the same, I did not want to give up on the other
subjects that had often given me joy. Consequentially, I viewed the Honors program as a perfect
blend of the two, something that would allow me to establish my career, while also providing me
with a diverse education.
My journey to UW was shaped by my teachers, my parents and COVID-19. It was my
teachers, many of them UW Alum, that helped grow my academic curiosity, encouraged my
academic studies, and pushed me to ask why instead of how. It was my parents that funded my
ventures, took me to extra curriculars, moved to our home town because it had better schools,
and when, I, struggling to decide where to go to school having received limited help from an
algorithm I created to decide for me, helped me come to the most sensible decision, it was
COVID-19 that made it impossible for me to visit the campus of one of my finalist colleges,
rendered the first year of college effectively identical regardless of institution, and made me
recognize the importance of financial responsibility.
At UW, I hope to accumulate knowledge that will provide me with the tools necessary to
succeed in my future careers. I want to know the intricacies of our cells, and the molecules,
compounds, atoms, quarks, that make them. I want to know how to apply that knowledge in a
meaningful manner. I want to know why things work, not how. Most importantly, I want to
know how the courses I take and the information that ingrains in my mind will allow me to have
a meaningful and positive impact on my community. If I can leave the UW and the
Interdisciplinary honors program knowing that, then the choice that an algorithm, my family, and
I all made will have been the correct one. Irregardless of what my Freshman, Sophomore, or
Junior self may have thought.
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