TORI.TIMMONS
WELCOME!
I am currently a senior at the University of Washington, majoring in Finance and minoring in Music. I am from Vancouver, BC and love the West Coast. My passions and experiences span across many disciplines and industries. In an attempt to articulate how important all of this is to me, I applied to the Husky Leadership Certificate and I have created this portfolio to reflect on my college life and Husky Experience.
MY WHY
I have a shallow why, a deeper why, a motivating goal, and some vague aspirations. Each of these I believe fuels my actions and ambitions but in a different way.
My shallow why: I do what I do because helping others makes me feel good.
My deeper why: I believe some institutions don’t help people enough (and I want to fix that).
My motivating goal: I want to become a person that I would look up to.
Vague aspirations: Continuous learning and emotional satisfaction.
These why’s guide me to pursue the things that I am interested in, in part to fulfill those vague aspirations. I also have intentionally broad why’s, making them applicable to a wide range of professions, industries, and activities. I think it's important that these are all distinct. It helps me to compartmentalize things. My shallow why is what I think of when I need a reminder of the reason I am doing something. My deeper why is to support that with a little bit less ambiguity.
My motivating goal is the biggest driver of my actions. I look up to extraordinary people. I look up to people who are changing lives and had to fight to get to where they are. I look up to people who have hard jobs. My parents are incredible examples of these. I look up to women in male-dominated industries. I look up to people who are exemplifying the change they are pushing towards. I look up to people who are solving the world's problems. This motivating goal is rooted in my values because I want to become all of these things.
Finally, I have a mantra that I believe is the backbone to all of above. I was rendered speechless when a mentor of mine said “you are going to be shocked out extraordinarily ordinary the world is”. For whatever reason, this resonated with me as deeply saddening and simultaneously incredibly motivating. I decided that I wanted to work towards an extraordinary life, because I don’t believe the world is ordinary. So my mantra is now “Help Others. Be Extraordinary.” Again, this is intentionally open so that it can mean putting 110% into helping tutor students, or it could mean walking a family around campus if their flight was delayed and they missed their tour. It is the big impact in the small actions.