Critical and creative thinking are the complementary skills that we use in different stages such as understanding, applying, analyzing, and creating when we trying to solve a problem and/or form a judgment in real life. Thinking critically requires us to clearly and logically consider information that is presented to us, whereas thinking creatively help us to generate new and novel ideas. During my academic journey at UW Bothell, I was given many valuable opportunities to work both individually and collaboratively on a variety of assignments that has tested my ability of critical and creative thinking including analysis, application, interpretation and other skills. By stepping out of my comfort zone and completing these assignments, it helped me understood more that to be successful on IAS journey means to be not only consumers but also as producers of interdisciplinary knowledge. As a Community Psychology major student, I was expected to develop my critical and creative thinking abilities by integrating knowledge across disciplines and contexts in ways that respect different approaches to understanding human development and well-being. Out of all academic accomplishments I have completed during my academic journey at UW Bothell, there are three artifacts of mine that I believe are perfect representations of me as a creative and critical thinker in academics.

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     The first artifact was the Critical Reflection Journal from my BIS255 Critical Diversity Studies class instructed by Professor Jason H. Morse, in which I was tasked to keep a critical reflection journal that involves reflections on the course readings that interest me the most by answering reflective questions throughout the quarter. This is one of simple, yet effective critical thinking techniques called the Socratic method. Based on asking and answering questions, it helps us to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas. I can’t really express enough the importance of critical reflection is to my learning process, in fact, I would argue there is no learning without reflection. This “Reflective practices” not only frames my engagement with the conceptual essays and graphic texts we read in the class in some way, but also it is an important way to come to an understating of new ideas and my own “take away” on them in order to develop resiliency, confidence, self-efficacy, self-worth, persistence and growth mindset. By completing this journal, I have had the valuable experience of reflecting in writing on my own intellectual journey as I made my way through the overdetermined stress and excitement of engaging social issues critically. It also shows my consistency in a long learning process and demonstrates the importance of reflection in such process.

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     The second artifact was the Final Paper(Stigma in Mental Health) from my BIS270 Abnormal Psychology class instructed by Professor William E. Hartmann, in which I was given the opportunity to critically discuss, analyze, and interpret the stigmatization of mental disorders, and how has it become an obstacle to a healthy society. Based on the research, we can conclude that the stigma behind mental illness was created before we had any scientific understanding based on the modern biological perspectives. As a matter of fact, we might unconsciously create a sick society in which everyone is in danger if we fail to recognize the power of stigma in the mental health field. This artifact is an example of my critical thinking abilities on considering the dynamics of normal and abnormal. What a cruel social mechanism can be when the evil is not owned by a particularly bad guy but is generally practiced by ordinary people. When people assume themselves normal and righteous, it is precisely the most terrifying crime that can be committed. 

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        The third artifact was the Social Psych in Context Paper from my BIS225 Social Psychology class instructed by Professor Janelle M. Silva, in which I was tasked to creatively and critically apply class materials into context. This artifact embodies my own critical thinking on being able to locate and summarize current news from reliable sources and then apply and connect concepts in social psychology to explain what is going on. The global practice of social distance due to the outbreak of COVID pandemic has boosted the development of online social media unsurprisingly, and the chance of social media users being exposed to misinformation (including conspiracy theories, clickbait, hyper-partisan content, pseudoscience and even fabricated “fake news” reports) has sharply increased more than ever. I have critically examined how social psychology concepts such as selective attention and confirmation bias contribute to the vulnerability of public susceptible to misinformation.

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