Alana Ikemoto at University of Washington

Hello Ms. Noreen! I just finished up my last week of my freshman year at the University of Washington and I can definitely say I had the best year I could imagine and I am so, so, so thankful.  I was looking at Asian American Studies or Psychology, but I knew I was missing that creative and artistic aspect in my life. I ended up taking a month long summer course right before the start of school about art and design at UW and I met fellow students interested in Design who really inspired me, so I said, "heck let’s go for Design." In order to get directly admitted to the Design Major, you must take a class called DESIGN 166 and pass with a 3.7 gpa or higher to be automatically admitted (about a 10% acceptance rate, or around 10 students out of 120 pass with a 3.7+) otherwise you must apply via portfolio. By some miracle of God, I worked extremely hard and got admitted into Industrial Design with a 3.9 gpa… I am still in shock! It is SO rare for freshmen to be admitted into their major their first year so I am just so thankful and feel so, so blessed. On top of that, I joined a “professional design fraternity” (not like crazy greek life haha) which has helped me grow in my design skills as well as find the most amazing people and community at school which is so fortunate to find at such a huge school like UW. For one of our projects in the DESIGN 166 class, we needed to make a product that would help people build good habits. I chose to make a product to help young children practice piano consistently for just a short amount of time per day and enjoy practicing! (I definitely could have used something like this as a kid and even as I got older, oops!) I have attached my project below and you can also find a YouTube link to the promo/ad video for the product. I thankfully scored well on this project and I owe it to piano and my wonderful years with you as my teacher! I can’t tell you enough how you kept me going, never getting mad at me for not practicing every day (even though I should have been!) but always encouraged me which is why I still have a passion to play.

WPS Alumni Page

Jaclyn Gerschultz 2020 U.C. Berkeley Graduate

" Hi Ms. Noreen!!! Miss you so much!!! How are you doing? Hope everything is going well with you as well:) Haha yes some updates! I’m in med school in Australia right now, just finishing up my first year! Its the University of Queensland-Oschner Clinical School program, so I finish up my last two years in New Orleans! Living here is wilddddddd, I’m so so happy I got the opportunity to live in a foreign country it has been such a cool experience. I’ve been able to do lots of traveling and exploring on this side of the world, been surfing and scuba diving quite a bit:) I do my clinical rotations right now at the Queensland Children’s Hospital! when I see a piano I go play some songs I still have memorized and have definitely impressed my friends here;) Thanks for checking in and you have no idea how often I think of piano and our lessons/workshops and what valuable experiences they were, I was just telling my friend here the other day about how they really got me used to being comfortable speaking/performing in front of people, such a helpful skill to be able to carry with me esp in medicine! Hopefully I can see you in person to catch up s