Anthony Xing

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8 December 2023

HONORS Experiential Learning: Tetris Club Final Reflection

Before I reflect on my experience as an officer in the Husky Tetris Club, I’d like to give a

brief description of the Husky Tetris Club and go over what I did as an officer in the Husky Tetris

Club. The Husky Tetris Club is a gaming RSO at the University of Washington where students

can chat about and play either classic Tetris or modern Tetris with each other. We have weekly

in-person meetings on Tuesdays from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM and officers usually must show up an

hour earlier at 6:00 PM to spend time planning other events or meetings.

As an officer in the Husky Tetris Club, I’ve helped to improve the user experience on

both the main and officer Discord servers, and I set up an automatic announcement system for

the weekly meetings. I’ve also helped with communication and external outreach, especially to

rhythm game clubs, which has caused the Husky Tetris Club’s member count to nearly double

since last school year. Additionally, I’ve helped to organize and plan the meetings and other

events of the club, like the big Halloween party we had.

After reflecting on my experience as an officer in the Husky Tetris Club and looking back

at my original application for the leadership experiential learning project, if I could rewrite my

answers to the questions on the application, I would make some of them talk more about a leader

getting to know the people they are leading. For example, if I could change my answer to the

question “What are the traits of a leader?”, I would add that a good trait of a leader is to better

understand and get along with the people you are leading or other leaders working with you. For
the question “Why is leadership valuable?”, I would further explain that getting to know the

people you’re working with is valuable because you get to make many positive connections with

people who share a common interest with you. In my case, this would be modern Tetris. Lastly,

for the question “How can leaders ensure their impact is positive?”, I initially gave an example

that talked about Napoleon Bonaparte, and now I would add that Napoleon got to know and

connect with many skilled generals like Massena during his military campaigns in Italy, so when

he became emperor of France, he made many of these generals marshals, which significantly

contributed to his military victories during the Napoleonic Wars. This is an example of how

getting to form more positive connections may give you more positive results. In my case as an

officer, forming connections with other members and officers gives me more opportunities to

socialize and hear about new things I may have never wondered about before. I think my new

answers to all the other questions in the application would be similar to the original ones.

Working as an officer in the Husky Tetris Club hasn’t furthered any of my educational

goals, since it’s a gaming RSO, so it has no connection to my CSE and MATH coursework or

research interests. However, I would say that being an officer has allowed me to achieve a

personal goal of getting to know and socialize more with other undergrads at UW. I’ve also

gotten to experience what being a leader is like, since I didn’t have that much coming into UW.

This leadership experience has given me more insight into and improvement on my soft and

social skills related to leadership, which I believe will be valuable in future opportunities. In

particular, I believe that leadership is very important, especially for me, because I want to pursue

a career in academia/research in the future, which may include being a professor or leading some

research project, both of which involve leading a group of students. Developing good social
skills and getting to know other students and their interests may also give me more opportunities

and insight into my teaching and research respectively.

Notably, I intend on continuing to be an officer for the Husky Tetris Club, because in

summary, I find modern Tetris to be very fun and I like socializing and getting to know the other

members/officers of the club. Again, it’s also good for improving my soft and social skills, which

could prove useful in the future for me. I’m also technically one of the officers for a theoretical

computer science club, so I’m strongly considering putting more time into that RSO during

future quarters as well to expand it and make it more active, especially since it has to do with

theoretical computer science, a research field I’m very interested in.