Over the summer, I worked as a camp counselor for the YWCA. I was placed in the “Explorer’s” classroom, which means I worked with kids ranging from 5th-8th grade. This was an amazing experience. Not only did I meet so many incredible people, but I developed my leadership skills further, made connections with some wonderful kids, and got experience working with a few kids with Autism. My role as a camp counselor was to implement daily activities such as arts and crafts, stay with the kids to make sure everyone was safe and having fun, and be a chaperone on field trips. I not only had a lot of fun doing this job, but I learned how to handle many different situations that involved conflict among the kids. With middle school-aged kids comes lots of drama, and I was the mediator between a couple of groups of people who did not get along. I made it clear that there would be no forms of bullying or exclusion in my classroom, and handled each conflict in the way that I felt would help the people involved learn from the situation. Aside from the occasional drama, I really enjoyed getting to know each kid and helping them have a great summer.
Author: Mackenzie King
~Tutoring Neuroscience Students~
After taking Psychology 3313 and Neuroscience 3000 and genuinely enjoying them, I decided to become a tutor for these two classes through an honorary called Nu Rho Psi. I started this at the beginning of my second year, and have been doing it ever since. Not only is this a great way to keep up with my basic Neuroscience knowledge, but it is also a great way to meet new people within and out of the Neuroscience major. The tutoring is set up in a group style, where students are free to come and go as they please and ask any questions they may have from each week’s lectures. There are usually about 4 tutors in the room, which allows for smaller groups to be formed to review the material. Some students who need extra practice will stay and we will review the lectures slide by slide, really trying to emphasize the important parts. We also have created a bank of questions and outlines for each chapter for both classes. On the weeks of exams, we use this question bank to quiz the students which is a great way for them to see where they are at. The students that I am tutoring are typically younger than me, but there are some students who have been the same age or even older than me. The age range has not only allowed me to share my knowledge about life at OSU and certain classes, but also to receive great advice from fellow tutors and students who have had different experiences than me at OSU. I enjoy being able to use my knowledge to help other people excel, and tutoring has been the perfect way to do this.
~Service Learning Trip to Ho, Ghana through STEP~
Thanks to the STEP program, I was able to travel to Ho, Ghana for a service-learning trip through Cross Cultural Solutions. This was such an incredible experience that I expanded on in a reflection in the following link. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity, and I truly feel like it changed my perspective on certain aspects of life.
~Nationwide Children’s Hospital~
I began volunteering at Nationwide Children’s in October of 2017, and it has truly been an incredible experience. I am assigned to a floor in which I go around and hang out with the kids who could use some extra attention. My floor includes a wide range of illnesses, from mental illness such as eating disorders and depression to babies with respiratory infections. My floor also includes the rehabilitation unit. What I do each time I go in truly varies based on the needs of the day. Sometimes, I spend the whole time playing with and comforting infants whose family members were not able to make it in that day. Other days, I hang out with toddlers or young children to give their parents a little bit of a break to go eat something or make some phone calls. The most important part of my position is making sure that every patient has some attention and is able to have a fun time despite the situation they are currently in. One of the experiences that has touched me the most was when I hung out with a young boy in the rehab unit who wasn’t vocal. Although there was an obvious barrier for communication, we were able to communicate in other ways such as hand motions and facial expressions. I felt as though I was able to make a real connection with him even though it was not through the traditional route of talking. Another experience that has stuck with me was also in the rehab unit, where I spent most of my shift walking around the floor with a little boy in a wheel chair. He was full of energy and so happy to be out and about. My experience at Nationwide Children’s has been an incredible one, and I look forward to the connections that I will continue to make with the patients and the nurses.
~Dr. Dana McTigue’s Lab~
I had the wonderful opportunity to work in a lab in the Neuroscience Department for about 6 months. I started in the summer of 2017 and was immediately intrigued by all of the projects going on. I was assigned to help a graduate student with her project involving the mTOR pathway and oligodendrocyte regeneration. She had several projects underway, which involved the spinal cords of either rats or mice. I was trained to work with the animals, and was even able to help prepare them for surgeries. My main duties in the lab included blocking and cutting spinal cord tissue, staining slides, and counting cells. I learned to identify and count several different types of cells, and mostly focused on counting the areas where two different types of cells were overlapping. I learned so much about the scientific process in this lab, and even gained some important skills in interpreting journal articles. Every other Wednesday, the grad students in my lab had a journal club in which I was allowed to participate. I would read the selected articles to the best of my ability beforehand, and listen as the grad students explained the figures and discussed the articles. This was extremely helpful for me because listening to their discussions clarified so much about the articles and figures that I was not too sure about when I first read them. Ultimately, this lab was a great experience, but a combination of several factors lead me to make the decision to step away from it in my second semester of sophomore year. I had learned so much about the research process, but I had also leaned a lot about myself, including the fact that this lab was just not the best thing for me at the time. I knew that there were definitely students out there who were 100% sure they wanted to pursue a PhD that would be ecstatic to be in my position and would be passionate about taking over the project that I was working on. This, along with my desire to become more involved in volunteering and other activities outside of research helped me make my decision to leave the lab. Despite this decision, I am so grateful for the time I spent in this lab and for all of the knowledge I gained from my incredible P.I. and all of the graduate students in the lab.
~Neuroscience Ambassador~
I have been a Neuroscience Ambassador for a little bit over a year now, and it has a great experience that has taught me so much and introduced me to so many amazing people. As a Neuroscience Ambassador, it is my responsibility, along with my fellow ambassadors, to represent the Neuroscience program at OSU. From working orientations, to events throughout the school year, to open houses, I am always available to to the new Neuroscience majors to answer any questions and to act as a mentor to guide them through their first year. Working as an ambassador is great because we get to make lasting relationships as we talk to some of the same students at each event. For example, the picture below shows me and a couple of my fellow ambassadors with a group of freshmen. We ended up making a group chat for the freshmen to ask us any questions they had throughout the year, which I hope was a helpful tool for them. At orientations, we helped each freshmen schedule their first semester of classes. At open houses, we talked to prospective students about the major and about OSU as a whole. Lastly, at events throughout the year such as the Pancake Break in fall Semester and various picnics on the oval we talked to the new majors and checked in to make sure everything was going okay for them in their first year. Being a Neuroscience Ambassador has given me so many great opportunities and connected me to some incredible people and I look forward to seeing what it brings in the future.
~Senior Prom~
In the fall of 2017, Buckeyes Against Alzheimer’s put on a senior prom for the residents of the Inn at Olentangy Trail. As a member of the board, we worked together to plan the best prom that we could. We decided to make the theme a masquerade, and had our members help to make masks for the students and residents. We invited the families of the residents, and worked with the staff at the Inn to make the event as comfortable as possible for the residents. We had a playlist of songs that we thought would be familiar to them, and we brought lots of good food. On the day of the event, we went early to set up and we went all out with the decorations. We had streamers, banners, masquerade themed posters, and LOTS of balloons, which ended up being a hit among the residents as they tried to keep them in the air and occasionally hit them right at the students with mischievous grins on their faces. We had the opportunity to talk to the loved ones of many of the residents as well as to watch the residents’ faces light up as they danced and talked to their family members. Overall, we had a great turnout at this event and the smiles on the residents’ faces were enough to prove that the prom was a huge success! 
~Year 2 in Review~
This year has definitely been a challenging one academically, but it has come with many great experiences. In terms of global awareness, I have been involved in many activities in which I am interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds. At Nationwide Children’s hospital, I have worked with many kids of various nationalities. Additionally, I traveled to Italy, Spain and France over the summer and was able to greatly appreciate the diversity in each of these places. In May, I will be traveling to the Volta Region in Ghana, Africa to volunteer through OSU in a children’s school. I am hoping that this experience will allow me to immerse myself in a new culture, and will give me important experience working with people from all around the world. I also decided this semester to pursue a minor in the medical humanities, and many of the classes I will be taking focus on a cultural perspective of medicine. I have had a few opportunities to engage in the research process. In my Biology 1114H class, we were able to create and conduct an experiment about endophytes from start to finish. We brainstormed ideas, collected samples, and carried out the experiment over the entire semester. We even wrote a research paper at the end of the year. This experience taught me a lot about the research process, especially the creative part of it. Over this past summer, I was in a radiology lab here at OSU. I worked for Dr. Michael Knopp analyzing MRI’s from a clinical trial involving glioblastoma. This project taught me even more about the research process, especially because I was in charge of comparing the parameters of the MRI’s submitted to the parameters suggested in the study. The lack of consistency in the parameters showed me just how difficult it can be to organize a country-wide clinical trial. From the end of the summer to January, I worked in a spinal cord injury lab under Dr. Dana McTigue. I helped a graduate student with her project involving the mTOR pathway and oligodendrocyte regeneration. I learned many new skills including staining slides, blocking and cutting tissue, giving subcutaneous injections, and counting specific types of cells. This lab was very beneficial for me because we had a biweekly journal club that I attended. All of the graduate students in the labs on our floor would take turns presenting a paper and interpreting the figures. This was a great way for me to improve my scientific reading skills. Lastly, I attended a couple of presentations where graduate students talked about their research. It was very interesting to hear about some of the studies going on at OSU. The courses that I have chosen to take throughout my four years reflect my ambition to become a doctor and to learn more about different cultures. I have chosen to take some graduate and honors level courses for my Neuroscience major in hopes to prepare myself for medical school. I chose a minor in the humanities because although I love science, it is important to me to be well-rounded and to learn about different cultures and how this plays into everyday life. Learning to be a leader is very important for my future career. I am a Neuroscience Ambassador, which means I talk to current and prospective students at various Neuroscience events about the program, I help freshman schedule at their orientations over the summer, and I do whatever the Neuroscience department needs me to do. I am also the treasurer for Buckeyes Against Alzheimer’s. This has been a valuable experience because it has taught me how to collaborate with the other members of the board to achieve all of our goals and to make sure everything runs smoothly. Lastly, I am a group leader at my church for Vacation Bible School. I am in charge of a group of kids as I lead them around to the different stations and make sure everyone is having fun and getting along. My goal is to work with kids as a doctor, so any experience I can get with children is great experience. I have been involved in a lot of service in my two years at OSU so far. First of all, I volunteer at Riverside Methodist Hospital where I walk patients and their families where they need to go, I discharge patients, and I do whatever the needs of the hospital are that day. I also have been volunteering at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. This has been an incredible experience and I have not only met some incredible children, but also some wonderful nurses and PCA’s who I have been able to get to know. It makes my day when I am able to spend time with a child who has not gotten a lot of attention that day due to their parents being at work. I have also been a tutor for students in beginners Neuroscience classes. I am available to the students to either go over their lecture notes or answer specific questions they may have. Lastly, through Buckeyes Against Alzhiemer’s, I have been able to volunteer at a nursing home in the dementia unit. The members of our club have had the opportunity to bond with some of the residents, and we were even able to throw them a senior prom which was a huge hit. I plan to continue my involvement in the community by staying involved with the previously mentioned activities. Additionally, I hope to get involved with Habitat for Humanity and I would love to be in the Big Sister Little Sister program. Overall, this year has taught me so much, and I am grateful for all of the incredible opportunities that I have been given.
~Dr. Knopp’s Imaging Lab~
At the beginning of the summer, I started a position in Dr. Michael Knopp’s Radiology Lab. Dr. Knopp is a radiologist with a PhD in Computer Science. Over the course of the summer, I have not only learned a significant amount about MRI’s, but also what goes into the organization and coordination of a clinical trial. There are many projects going on in Dr. Knopp’s lab at the Wright Center of Innovation, but I specifically spent most of my time working on a Glioblastoma clinical trial, and some of it working on a Meningioma clinical trial. My job was to look at patient scans as well as the parameters of their scans and compile the information so that a comparison could be done to see if all of the sites were sending in scans that were up to protocol. Depending on the sequence of the MRI and the field strength of the scanner(3T or 1.5T), different parameters were laid out. In these trials, the sequences looked at were T2, FLAIR, 3D T1 (pre- and post-contrast), DWI, and Perfusion (DSC for the Glioblastoma trial and DCE for the Meningioma trial). I learned the defining features of each type of scan, and which parameters are most important for each type. One of the main goals of the compilation project was to use this information to decide how close the parameters of the scans sent in had to be to the protocol to be acceptable for the trial. Different sites have different types of scanners, so communicating exactly what is wanted for each trial is extremely important for the trial to have accurate and comparable results. So much work is put into improving the the protocol so that there are substantially less problems and disparities for future trials. Since these trials use patients from different facilities throughout the U.S., it is very important to be clear and concise in communicating the specific scans that each trial requires. This research experience has not only given me a great foundation of imaging information that I will be able to use in the future, but has also introduced me to some incredible people. Overall, I am happy to have helped out in a lab that has opened my eyes to a different side of the research process.
~Shadowing Dr. Boehmer~
I was lucky enough to shadow the head of the ER at Dublin Methodist Hospital. I followed Dr. Boehmer into each room and learned many interesting things as I went along. One thing in particular that stood out to me was one patient who was a heroin addict. I had definitely heard about drug addicts coming into hospitals and making up symptoms to receive drugs, I just did not realize how often it occurred. This patient was saying everything they could to receive any type of painkiller. Another thing that stood out to me was a little kid with a bad family situation. The parents of the little kid were divorced. One of the parents was originally at the ER with the little kid, then the next thing I knew, the other parent came in and started fighting with the parent that was already there to take the kid home. This stood out to me because when I think of becoming a doctor, I typically only think of the medical part of it. However, these experiences made me realize that knowing what to do in various situations and interacting with families is also a huge part of the job. Shadowing Dr. Boehmer was an awesome experience, and it definitely taught me a lot about the field.