Honor’s Law 100 was one of the first courses I took at the UW. I felt like it was a meaningful artifact because (1) it was the first course I took about the discipline I planned to pursue in college, and (2) it had elements of lecture and small group discussion in its structure. There was a main lecture with a mix of students from different disciplines, and an Honors section that functioned as an intensive seminar where students completed supplementary readings and participated in discussions. 

One of the most unique aspects of the course was the professor’s “students teach the class” model. Each week, a small group of students led the seminar, presenting key ideas from the readings and guiding discussion through prepared questions and activities. This was particularly stressful for me, as I struggled with public speaking anxiety and the stress of knowing that the professor had already read the articles and had his own preconceptions about them. However, this class really helped me get over this fear and learn how to not just understand reading material, but to synthesize it and anticipate multiple perspectives from my peers. The slides pictured here come from some of my presentations this quarter, where I helped facilitate a conversation connecting the assigned reading to themes we had discussed in class.

A unit I found to be especially interesting focused on injury law and torts, especially the ways tort outcomes can disproportionately affect marginalized communities. Studying these cases taught me about how legal systems, while seemingly neutral, can reinforce existing inequalities depending on who has access to resources/good representation. This topic deepened my interest in how law intersects with social justice and public policy, and challenged me to consider how legal structures can both protect and disadvantage different populations.

Overall, Honor’s Law 100 completely redefined my understanding of what learning can look like. While it was stressful at times, the class gave us opportunities to question assumptions and to build our knowledge collaboratively. However, the amount of reading and analytic writing was not appealing to me, and I started to shift my goals away from pursuing law following this course. I would say it was meaningful in the sense that I learned a lot of important things, and it also gave me more context into what sort of work I might not want to pursue in the future.