Second Semester Mentee Interview

Allison Round is a second semester freshman in the Advocates for Communities and Education Scholars (ACES) program. While she has not decided a specific topic that she is interested in studying and her major is still Exploration, she has thoroughly enjoyed exploring different General Education courses to discover her interests over the course of this year. In terms of career plans, Allison wants to pursue a career in the healthcare field and is currently trying to find a major that will appropriately complement her goals for the future.

Throughout this year, Allison has developed a variety of study habits including studying in the library, using Quizlet flashcards, and using the resources available on campus such as the free OSU Writing Center. She feels that by improving her study habits and avoiding procrastination, she has been able to have a successful first year on campus. The class that Allison found the most challenging this year was Chemistry and the class that she found the most taxing was Human Biology. In the Human Biology course, the students are required to write many policy papers and she found that this was very tiring and uninteresting. For a period of time, Allison was interested in pursuing a career in Social Work, however after taking a Social Work class, she feels that Social Work may not be her calling.

Aside from academics, Allison has also enjoyed exploring a multitude of different extracurricular activities on campus. She joined a club titled MUNDO to pursue her interest in global citizenship and social change and joined a community service fraternity on campus to expand her social network. She will be serving on the Executive Board of MUNDO in the upcoming semester and plans to keep her involvement for next semester consistent with this past year.

As a member of ACES, Allison enjoyed living in Smith-Steeb Hall this year. She felt that living with other ACES students was a great way to make friends quickly and feel comfortable in a new environment. Since she has a passion for community service and children, she felt that the volunteering opportunities provided by ACES were particularly enjoyable and tailored to her hobbies. She recommends that incoming freshmen also look into scholars programs on campus to meet people that share similar interests.

Allison has had a great experience in her first year at Ohio State. When recalling the best moments from the last year, she claimed that her favorite memory was traveling to Puerto Rico with the MUNDO club. During her time in Puerto Rico, she had the opportunity to visit the Bioluminescent Bay, go kayaking, walk through the streets of Old San Juan, among many other experiences. It was her first time visiting a rainforest, jumping off a bridge into the ocean, and visiting the Caribbean Sea. She felt that Puerto Rico was the perfect combination of city life and beach, and hopes to return to the beautiful island someday. The group also had the opportunity to take a food tour to discover the flavor and culture of Puerto Rico and Allison claims that this was one of the best experiences that she has ever had.

Lastly, her goals for the future include taking a greater diversity of classes to definitively decide a major for study in college and narrow down her options for a future career path. She hopes to continue exploring the opportunities and resources that this incredible university has to offer. From traveling abroad to finding new study locations, Allison hopes to make the most out of her college experiences as a member of ACES and as a student at The Ohio State University.

First Semester Mentee Interview

Allison Round is a first semester freshman at The Ohio State University with an Undecided major. Since she is undecided, she has decided to take a variety of classes in different subjects to experiment with different fields and figure out where her passions lie. Throughout this semester, she has found a variety of places to study and learned new ways to study. Currently, her favorite place to study is the basement of the 18th Avenue library. She has found that the 18th Avenue library basement is not as crowded as the other areas of the library and provide a nice, quiet environment for her to complete her studying. This semester, Allison has found Chemistry to be the most difficult class. This is due to the large amount of work accompanied by the five-credit hour class. She finds the weekly lab reports, pre-labs, and keeping up with the lecture material for exams to be very time-consuming and exhausting.

In high school, Allison participated in a variety of clubs and volunteering activities. She was involved with Key Club, National Honors Society (NHS), swimming, among many other extracurriculars. She hopes to continue that trend by volunteering at Ohio State as well. While the adjustment to the workload and difficult class schedule has made it difficult to volunteer in her first semester on campus, she hopes to change that and get involved more in her second semester at Ohio State.

Allison chose to be a part of the Advocates for Communities and Education Scholars (ACES) program due to her love for service and desire to branch out and explore new things in college. Since she has not yet decided on a major, Allison wanted to fully explore her options and believed that ACES might be the perfect way to do so. Since joining the program, she has met a variety of people in different majors and believes that being a part of a scholars program is a unique perspective due to the diversity in majors and subjects studied with a common goal to address issues in the community and provide service for those in need. In the scholars program, she is looking forward to building a sense of community and having that core group of people to help navigate her first year. She also hopes that being a part of this community will provide access to opportunities for volunteering and service that would be otherwise difficult to seek out.

As for careers, Allison is still unsure of her plans post-graduation. She believes that once she is able to identify a major that she would like to pursue, the possible career options will appear and she will be able to proceed from there. She is considering graduate school, however, since she has not narrowed down her field of interest, she cannot definitively put into words her plans after completing her undergraduate years at The Ohio State University.

While she hasn’t solidified her plans for the future, Allison has numerous skills to help her achieve her goals in whichever field she decides to pursue. She has a planner that she uses daily to organize her work and ensure that she finishes everything within the necessary time and deadlines. She finds that scheduling her time appropriately has helped her manage her time properly and have a successful first semester at Ohio State. Due to the difficult transition from high school to college, Allison believes that the most important thing that she has learned so far in her time at OSU is methods for effective studying and study habits that suit her style of learning. Overall, Allison has enjoyed her first semester of college and feels that she has learned a lot about college and about herself since the beginning of the year. She hopes to continue learning about her passions and growing in her time at Ohio State.

Service Engagement

The “S” in G.O.A.L.S. stands for Service Engagement. To me, service is any time taken helping another person. I was raised believing that the greatest thing that you can do in life is help another person. Service has always been an important part of my life, from middle school, when I was involved with Girl Scouts, to high school, when I spent a large portion of my time volunteering and working for non-profit organizations. In high school, I was fortunate enough to have the resources to work on a service project to raise funds to send children in my family’s hometown in India to school. I met these incredible children and families that despite having almost nothing, told me that their greatest desire was to attend school or send their children to school to receive an education. Seeing the face of these individuals light up when I said that I would do everything in my power to help is the reason that I believe service to be so incredibly important and rewarding. While this was a global scale project, that ecstatic expression is the same in most community service environments. It is the same expression that kids in the community have on their faces when you make blankets for them or donate old clothes and toys for them to use. I am an incredibly privileged individual and I truly believe that as someone blessed with good fortune, it is my responsibility to help those less fortunate and engage in service.

Research Presentation

Link to Research Presentation: ISR Final Presentation-q331r2

Independent Scientific Research is a program that I participated in during my junior and senior years of high school. It is a program that focuses on exposing high school students to the world of research and possibilities in their scientific careers. In my senior year, I interned in the Brown lab at The Ohio State University. The lab studies the cytoskeleton of nerve cells and is trying to understand the mechanism of axonal transport and the role of neurofilaments in health and disease. This was an amazing experience for me and taught me not only about neuroscience, but also about the process of research, how to use different types of microscopes, laboratory protocol, how to read scientific literature, data analysis, how to use image processing software, and scientific data presentation. It was significant to me because it was an opportunity for me to become involved in the scientific community and learn from more experienced individuals. I was able to have intellectual conversations with members of the lab and learn more about work that is being done to understand mechanisms that are not currently understood. This questioning and curious nature is the heart of research, and gave me a grasp for the world of scientific research and the possibilities. I truly appreciated not only participating in the research, but also the time that the Principle Investigator of the lab and the lab manager invested in me to enrich my learning experience. At the end of my time in the lab, I gave a presentation about my involvement in the lab in front of my peers, teachers, and those in the Brown lab. My project was on the “Quantification of Neurofilament and Tubulin Segregation in IDPN Axons”, and I was able to present the material in an educated way to graduate students in the lab as well as in a simplified version to my classmates and educators at my school that do not have a background in neurofilament transport or IDPN axons. Overall, the experience was very special to me, and the presentation is a summary of that experience, which is why it is very significant to me.

Year in Review

[ “Year in Review”  is where you should reflect on the past year and show how you have evolved as a person and as a student.  You may want to focus on your growth in a particular area (as a leader, scholar, researcher, etc.) or you may want to talk about your overall experience over the past year.  For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Global Awareness

The “G” in the G.O.A.L.S. acronym stands for Global Awareness. To me, global awareness indicates a greater awareness of the world and differences in people, cultures, opinions, etc. It is not only understanding that others are different, but appreciating and embracing that diversity to enrich the world that I believe makes a globally aware individual. I hope to discover more of these differences in my classes. In particular, I am planning on taking Sociology, Anthropology, International Studies, and Spanish, which I believe will help expand my understanding of other cultures and people. As a student with Indian ancestry, I am a member of the Indian American Association and Indian Student Association on campus, however, I believe that diversity does not only lie in race. I think that in every class, program, and organization, there is some level of diversity, whether it be diversity of gender, religion, ideas, age, ability, wealth, knowledge, or any other characteristic used to describe a person. In just the first few weeks of college, I met people drastically different from me in every way, and it has been an eye-opening journey that I look forward to continuing through classes, clubs, and service in my next few years of college.

Career

[“Career” is where you can collect information about your experiences and skills that will apply to your future career.  Like your resume, this is information that will evolve over time and should be continually updated.   For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Meningitis Poster

Link to Meningitis Poster: Meningitis-2es8tui

This poster was my final project for my Biology 1113 class this semester. It was created as a final project for the biology lab and aimed to combine multiple concepts learned over the course of the class. As a student interested in medicine, I was very intrigued when my TA mentioned that for the final project, we would choose a disease to research and present in our lab groups. My group chose Meningitis per my request because I was fascinated with how the bacteria infects the human brain and the prevalence of this disease on college campuses before the discovery of the vaccine. It not only required a lot of time to complete this project, but it was also one of the only times this semester that I believe that I fully immersed myself in a group project and created a product that made me truly proud. It strengthened my research skills, my presentation skills, and my teamwork skills. The group created a work distribution statement and I was tasked with understanding the mode of infection for this disease which peaked my interest strongly. As a pre-med student in college, I think that sometimes the main focus is the chemistry and biology classes in preparation for the MCAT, but this project helped remind me the reason that I became interested in medicine in the first place. It is the disease, treatment, and impact on the human body that drives my interest in the medical field, and that is what I was re-exposed to over the course of this project.