“WEP was a unique and insightful experience to engage with my peers in an intimate yet still academically beneficial environment. It felt like an ice breaker in a way, but only so in the ways it broke down some barriers between my peers and me. A key takeaway for me was the way I learned it is okay to acknowledge and work with your own voice when interviewing a person. The total absence of bias in the narrative is nearly impossible, but I believe there is a power in acknowledging this. The trick is balancing that bias with the narrative being told. Hearing others' stories has more impact than sharing your own, I've learned. That doesn't mean your own is less significant or doesn't have a place in the conversation, but it does mean learning to understand time and place and the appropriate ways to incorporate your own narrative into that of another. WEP was integral in my understanding of this. 

When I was interviewed by a peer for WEP, I remember feeling as if their account of my story was an account of someone else. I don't believe I answered their questions as well as I could have, and I feel as if I painted a picture of a wildly different person. I believe this is a difficult aspect of empathy and a unique one in many ways. Empathy demands an understanding of the self, or at least the beginning of one. When I was in WEP, I was a freshman struggling with this concept of self-understanding. In hindsight, I do believe this interview taught me things about myself that I didn't already know. Although I initially didn't feel it represented me, I have learned to recognize some of the traits it shed light on. The voice wasn't mine, but my voice helped that voice to articulate some things about me that I am grateful for now understanding. In that way, being interviewed for WEP taught me to acknowledge and work with the walls I have put up around myself.” -Lilly