After my first semester at Ohio State, I unfortunately found myself with some unfortunately bad grades and needing to reassess my efforts as a student. Over the past few semesters, I have spent most of my time working on classwork and fulfilling academic requirements to make up for that difficult first semester, but I also feel as though I missed some other enriching opportunities as a result of my hyper-focus on academics. Now that I am more adjusted to college and what college classwork is like, I hope to spend more of my time working on pursuing extracurricular academic opportunities.
Since I am looking into pursuing very competitive academic and career paths, I realize I need to boost the skills and knowledge I learn in my classes with knowledge gained outside of the classroom. Due to this, even beyond my participation in ACES and into my years as a junior and senior, I hope to pursue more service- and leadership-based activities, particularly those centered around the environment and solidarity with local communities, to both achieve beneficial change for those causes and to obtain the extracurricular skills needed to further those causes in the future.