Coming to UMW was a decision that I did not realize would have such a strong impact on all aspects of my life. I knew that college was a time to learn in the classroom, about yourself as well as getting involved. I had heard all of these things before but it has been great seeing all of it come into pracice and apply to my life directly.
This is where a breakdown of why I chose to do this as my example of a network will be.
Each of these groups that I have added as an 'element' in my KUMU have been things that I have gotten involved with during my time at UMW thus far. Each has helped me to get to the point of declaring my major, choosing extra cirriculars and helping to guide my future career path.
The people here have made an immense impact on me in numerous ways. For example, everyone that I work with in Admissions is either a student at the university or someone who has attended a four year college and is a wealth of knowledge about our university, college as a whole and how to go about applying to graduate schools. As you can see, there is lots of overlap between people and the organizations that I am involved in.
Each of the organizations that I have listed in my KUMU map: Campus Programming Board, being an Orientation Leader, and a Washington Guide are all influential to my social life on campus as well as preparing me to work in student affairs later on down the road.
The way that I chose to create my KUMU network was by starting with me as the central element. Everything that I have added is because it is personally relevant and important to me during my time here. From there, I have added elements and connections. Connections here work like they do in person, every person that I have met has introduced me to someone else and because of that I had the chance to meet even more people. This KUMU map shows how those connections to people and activities have played out for the past two years at UMW.
I tried to color code each element so that it would be easier to read and understand when looking at it. The dot that represents me is a light pink color and everything stems from it because it is all related to what I am doing here. The purple dots are the main organizations that I am involved in which includes Campus Programming Board, Orientation and working with Washington Guides as a tour guide. Red dots are people that act as my advisors. Green dots are my bosses, and green/blue dots are admissions counselors who are above me but aren't my direct boss. Everyone else that is represented by a blue circle is a friend that has been important to me in some way or another throughout my time here at UMW.
Background picture taken by Khurt Williams