Grayson Finklea
- Aspiring Accountant
Hey!
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​I am a sophomore at the University of Texas at Dallas. My Major is undecided, but I am currently pursuing Accounting and Language Arts degrees. No matter what I am involved in, I love discovering new things and engaging with new ideas.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!
About Me
Boyscouts
I’ve been in scouting programs since I was a tiger scout at 4 years old. Since then, I have actively attended weekly scout meetings, attended monthly campouts, and have accrued over 100 hours of community service. I’ve also worked in several assistant and primary leadership positions inside the troop, serving as both patrol leader and assistant patrol leader, troop scribe, leading two separate high-adventure treks, and entering into the Boy Scout honor society, the Order of the Arrow. My longest-lasting position was serving 4 years as my troop's axe master, meaning that I was trusted with teaching the younger scouts how to safely use and care for axes, saws, and knives.
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Video Games
I enjoy trying and completing difficult video games. Video games offer entire worlds of complex systems, movement options, and puzzles for you to explore. I like the challenge of trying to understand the systems developers create, as well as the different tools and resources they give you to navigate that system. Having that sense of fully completing a task, along with the journey of slowly increasing my scope of understanding, is what drives me to be engaged and push through those difficulties.
Professional Experiences
SWG
(Short-Term Working Group)
In early 2024, I applied and participated in a short-term work group discussing Narrative Systems with Prof. Monica Evans at the University of Texas at Dallas. I was a freshman at the time while the other participants were older and much more experienced with the subject. The group met multiple times throughout the semester and discussed subjects that I was familiar with, but found that my understanding and breadth of knowledge were far behind the others. I used what I did know and tried to absorb as much as I could in our first meeting. From then on, on multiple occasions, I offered feedback and ideas that perhaps weren't new to the professor, but I was able to spark ideas that led to more productive conversations among my peers.
Winter Camp Staff
In late 2023, I volunteered to staff at a local scout camp in their lumberjack activity area. We dressed in lumberjack costumes (flannel shirts and jeans) and led different activity/game areas during the day. Along with helping out the Adult leader of our staff area with various projects around the campground, I served the role of teaching all first-year scouts (60-70 people) the totin chit program. This program involves getting young scouts ready to use axes, saws, and knives safely. This includes verbally communicating safety and Scouting rules, guiding and supervising the active use of dangerous tools, and making sure the scouts are engaged and having fun!
I’ve had experience teaching this program before, but a problem came where a massive amount of scouts were sent to learn this program all at once. Because of this, I was forced to improvise, getting the help of two assistants unfamiliar with the program assigned to me. It was about a 2-hour struggle of trying to balance time constraints with teaching the scouts the material and guiding my assistants. The three of us just barely managed to complete the requirements on time. However, as a kind of reward, each kid looked happier going out of the program than they did coming in. Seeing the way they felt made this an unforgettable experience that has greatly changed the way I look at teems, showing how important teamwork and collaboration is to achieve a goal.
School Projects
In a Business Communication class, We were tasked with making comments to a pretend supervisor about some mistakes in an email they were planning to send to their team, as well as writing a fixed version of that email that still got the intended message across. This activity required us to interpret the meaning of a made email and then respond with effective feedback that maintains a respectful tone and attitude towards the supervisor. We were required to use information that we learned in class about business-appropriate and business-effective communication to both make our edits and in our remaking of the supervisor's email.
In my creative writing class, we were tasked with creating a professional portfolio of our works while we were learning to write and communicate our ideas in new forms. We were required to properly format our work while refining and editing mistakes until they were in a presentation-ready state. We were also required to cite the inspirations for our works in an annotative bibliography while following proper MLA citation guidelines. We used various elements of creative writing that we were exposed to in class, such as messing with the structure of our words on the page, using different writing styles, fonts, and narrative structure, while using what were know to artistically express who we are onto the page.
Team Presentation
In a Business Communication class, we teamed up with randomly assigned group members and were tasked with providing an informative formal presentation on the different non-verbal aspects of communication. Our team first did introductions and learned more about our team members. We then looked at the different forms of non-verbal communication and split up which type each of us felt we could better discuss. Then, we set a group timeline for ourselves and periodic progress checks and practices for our speaking parts, as well as time for peer review of each other's work. Near the very end of our preparations, our team decided to change the format of our presentation from being in-person to being online. This being a late change, we have to quickly set an appropriate meeting time and ready extra preparation to be ready on time to record.
Data Tracking Activity
This project required us to record a dataset of our choosing and use our skills to record, graph, analyze, and identify any correlation or gaps/outliers in the data. I have been recording my 1 1/2 mile run time each day for the last 2 months (I did not use an app to record, partially because Excel has better graphing capabilities). Sadly, I noticed a downward trend in my "days vs run time" graph. I believe this was partially due to an external factor, which was likely just midterms. A lot of tests were coming up during that period, which made me less motivated to run well and had me focus my energy on those instead. I noticed that there were several time increases where I ran much slower compared to other days. I decided to try and see if there was a correlation between these slower runs and the breaks I took from running. As it turns out, there was around a 60% correlation (r = .6) between the two variables. This was less than I was expecting but still shows a statistically significant correlation between the two. If I were going to do something like this again, I would like to try and calculate if these breaks have any significant long-term impact on my run speed and how long any resulting change in time would last. It would also be interesting to find what variables impact this long term.