Unfortunately, I tend to be a fairly shy person when offered positions of leadership; I tend to be self-effacing and avoidant of positions that would make me “the center of attention,” in a sense. I want to find a way to change this and to become more comfortable with leadership positions, as I don’t want to limit myself within my future academics or career. Within the next couple years of college, I intend to run for an executive board position for a service-based student organization, so I will both have to speak personally to my own skills and their value within that position, and I will have to acclimate myself to be “the center of attention.” Even if I would fail to achieve the position I run for, I would still be demonstrating comfort — or at least beginning a process of becoming comfortable — with a leadership position.

A regret I am leaving ACES with is that I did not run for the Leadership Committee, simply because I was unsure of myself. That regret should not follow me, and it has taught me that I should pursue goals that align with my imagination and ambition, even if I feel some slight element of self-doubt. This regret has taught me that self-doubt only leads to regret, and that I should not indulge it.

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.

Before entering The Ohio State University, I never experienced going to an educational institution that was as large or had as many resources for learning. For this reason, I was fairly overwhelmed when looking at the class schedule and the sheer number of intellectual resources available to students. Due to this, I have the goal to engage in as many academic opportunities as possible.

For example, I am particularly interested in doing a project for the STEP program. Particularly, I am interested in doing a video project about climate change and the societal, political, and existential threats it poses toward the working class. I have two reasons for this: I have always enjoyed making videos, a skill I’m rarely able to use, and that subject is one that I find extraordinarily important. Even if not through a program like STEP, a project like that has interested me for awhile and I would like to work on it at some point.

Coming from a fairly homogeneous hometown, I can say I wasn’t as educated about cultural differences as I would like to be. For this reason, after arriving at The Ohio State University, I have begun to engage with people I would not have been able to in my hometown and people with backgrounds that are different from my own. I also intend to study abroad, on another continent, by the end of my third year.

Sometimes I feel as though my lack of experience with diversity has, to an extent, deprived me of some intellectual breadth. Many times I feel unsure of the ways to be most respectful around others with different experiences – e.g., people who do not come from small, mostly-white townships in Ohio. Luckily there are resources on campus, like the Global Engagement Office, that can enable me to have some more experience with people of diverse backgrounds, before I graduate and enter the wider world.