“Hel-lo, m-y nam-e is Sh-an-el. I a-m fif-teen y-ears o-l-d.” This was the first time that I met Shanel, a shy but cheerful young girl who suffers from autism spectrum disorders (ASD). At this point of my life, I had no idea what ASD was, but the only thing I knew was this girl had suffered a lot from it, and we are only one month apart. For those who concern, people with ASD usually suffer severe deficits in social interactions, repetitive behaviors, and even delayed or disordered languages. It is a common disease that currently affects 1% of children, and yet the rate continues to grow. Through Shanel, I got to work with FCSN (Friends of Children with Special Needs), where I realized how many children and adults are suffered from varies types of psychological disorders and how much I would like to learn and help those like Shanel to build a brighter future. To me, Shanel was the key that not only strives me into the world of psychology, but also made me start to be aware of the lack of information access in China around psychological disorder.

Coming to UW, I joined many leadership programs and clubs, including Technology and Business Association (TBA) as well as UW Leaders (UWL). Being the committee leader in TBA for four times, as well as an official leader in UWL, I not only learned to be responsible but also recognize how to effectively taking initiatives. Within a year, I cooperated with other TBA officers helped more than five hundred UW students by building social media platforms for them to share research opportunities and internship experiences, as well as connecting them to workers in the current industries. Through TBA, I understood the effectiveness of current technologies and wanted to learn more effective ways to help spread awareness of psychology and psychological disorders.

It was a complete changing point for me to take CSE 142 and INFO 200. Since I have never had any coding experience before, the computer science series has been tough; however, I was surprised by the solid coding foundation that the series gives me. In addition, the INFO 101 and INFO 200 classes taught me so much about information system, user interface vs. user experience design, as well as how effective it could be to store, retrieve information using information structure. But the thing that surprised and excited me the most, is how the disability studies and designing accessible systems have helped others and technologies in general improves. The potential possibilities that this major holds, in my opinion, could help me so much more when combined with psychology on dealing with the lack of information access as well as raise the awareness on psychological disorders.