Illuminate x Hiren Reflection Blogs

Hi everyone! My name is Dhruv and I am a second year student at the University of Toronto. Last Sunday, I had the pleasure to attend Illuminate x Hirenn’s resiliency workshop. Here are my thoughts highlighting what I learned about...

What I learned about resilience from the workshop?

Although I knew the basics about what resilience meant, this workshop gave me more of an insight into what this term fully means. When I say that I know what resilience means, I sort of just refer to synonyms of this word without being able to explain it in a full sentence. From the workshop however, I learned that resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of things such as adversity, trauma, threats, and stress. In other words, it can also be described as reviving from difficult experiences.

What did I learn from Hiren?

There were many things that I learned from Hiren in his presentation, however the one thing that protruded me the most was the ability to take positive aspects from negative outcomes. For instance, at one point in the presentation he talked about positives to take from not being selected for a job after an interview. He focused on how we can look at positives such as interview experience, growing as a person, looking for other opportunities. Overall, I learned to take positives from negative outcomes rather than dwelling on the past.

What did I most enjoy about Illuminate x Hiren workshop? Please share thoughts and comments with examples.

What I enjoyed most about this workshop was how engaging it was. Hiren used this software called Mentimeter which allowed us to give our thoughts on questions he had as shown here in the picture. I enjoyed this because it made me more engaged towards his presentation by answering these questions rather than just sitting behind a screen and listening to the speaker talking. On top of the polling questions he had, a three-question quiz was also put out for us which made it even more fun and engaging!

How will I apply my learning to my future career goals and/or personal development?

Going back to the topic of positivity, I gained a lot of knowledge on how to think positively and be resilient. In the future, I know there will be obstacles, challenges and negative outcomes that will come in front of my way, but I will take the positives from these challenges and be resilient which will make my personality stronger.