Year in Review Freshman year

Throughout my first year, I learned a lot about balancing my life in general. Through juggling work, school, and extra-curricular activities I became a more organized and time conscious person.

Before coming to Ohio State, I was easily the least self-sufficient person out there, I never had to budget for anything and most of my needs were fulfilled by my parents. However, with the transition from a state of being provided for to a state having to provide for myself I feel I have grown in many ways and the H&S GOALS (listed below) have really assisted me in that growth.

Global Awareness

Honors & Scholars students will examine what it means to be global citizens by enrolling in coursework with an international focus; studying, researching, or interning abroad; or participating in internationally focused activities such as service, work, or student organizations.  Students will cultivate and develop their appreciation for diversity and each individual’s unique differences.

Original Inquiry

Honors & Scholars students will understand the research process by engaging in experiences ranging from in-class scholarly endeavors to creative inquiry projects to independent experiences with top researchers across campus and in the global community.

Academic Enrichment

Honors & Scholars students will pursue academic excellence through rigorous curricular experiences beyond the university norm both in and out of the classroom.  Students will be able to contextualize their formal education with respect to career and life options.

Leadership Development

Honors & Scholars students will develop leadership skills that can be demonstrated in the classroom, in the community, in their co-curricular activities, and in their future roles in society.  Students will be assisted by the Center with connecting to those leadership opportunities that best meet their interests and talents.

Service Engagement

Honors & Scholars students will commit to service to the community.  Students will be exposed to the many social issues prevalent in society by partaking in a variety of service opportunities offered through the Center and other departments on campus.  Students will connect their service experiences to their specific major or area of interest whenever possible.​​

The STEM EE program and the GOALS associated with the Honors and Scholars Program were extremely helpful in my growth. With regards to global awareness, I took part in a multitude of activities around campus which showcased the diversity of other cultures around campus. Original Inquiry was developed mostly through my STEM classes which I took, looking at advanced scientific concepts helped to broaden my mind about the world around me and led to ask more meaningful questions. Academic Enrichment was also an area in which I grew in once again through the diversity and difficulty of the classes I took this year. As far as leadership goes, I decided to take the initiative and become a Vice-President of one student organization on campus and a student government coordinator for another. These used to be tasks that I would shy away from because they would generally require decision making skills which I had not yet acquired up until this point. Service Engagement was developed specifically through the STEM EE programs I volunteered at an inner city school helping students with a wide range of subjects at a wide range of ages. This experience helped me to understand the struggles that many people go through and opened my eyes to a completely different side of society which I generally pushed to the back of my mind.

Global Awareness and Service Engagement

As a premedical student global awareness and service engagement are the two G.O.A.L.S that are going to play the largest role in my professional and academic success. Global awareness because studying medicine will require me to be up to date on the latest medical advancements and the most recent debates amongst the medical community. Global Awareness is also important as motivation to continue my goal of studying medicine by keeping me engaged in the field itself. Service fits in also because of the requirements of my desired profession. The average medical school applicant enters with approximately 650-700 hours of service in both clinical and non-clinical fields. Service is also important because it will give me a taste of what I will be experiencing if I go on to choose medicine as a profession. This means I will be spending a lot of time with a multitude of organizations in order to ensure that the requirements for service are met.

 

My plan for incorporating Global Awareness over the next year is to subscribe to one maybe two medical journals which highlight the current medical topics of the day. This will allow to keep in touch not just with the issues of the medical field but also with how the issues move from one to another. Over the next four years, I hope to attend various conferences which concern various medical advancements and innovations to help make me more aware of the direction medicine is taking. And over 10 years, I hope to do some research on new medical techniques so as to assist in furthering medicine  using the knowledge and awareness of ethics and procedure gained over the years to make meaningful advancement in medicine and medicinal research. By slowly adding to the areas in which I become more “globally aware” I will be able to ensure that I can maintain my interest in my desired profession as well as be able to go more in  depth on the topics I am interested in rather than engulf my self in a multitude of topics of which I am only generally aware.

 

My plan for incorporating Service Engagement over the next year is to join a small service organization which may or may not be medicine related. Groups like ecological groups also interest me but the overall goal is to get a feel for the time commitment a service group would need and also to be able to balance myself between school, work, and volunteer hours. In the next four years, I hope to have made one or two long term commitments to some medically related service groups, whether that be with the red cross assisting with blood donations or taking up a role in a hospital as I had done previously and assist in patient admittance and dismissal from the hospital. Over the next ten years, I hope to have travelled to a couple of different underprivileged countries on medical missions to help provide free healthcare to those who need it. Through this gradual progression of enhancing my service engagement I will be able to ensure that I have met the requirements needed to enter medical school and will have been able to manage my time and my commitments well.

In all, Service and Global Awareness right now are the most important of the H&S GOALS. Although the other GOALS do hold some significance the value through the furthering of my career goals that both service and global awareness bring to me make them overwhelmingly more important than the rest.

 

The STEM Engagement and Exploration program has truly helped me as an individual grow throughout the course of the year. Through the intramural sports teams I have learned to work with groups coherently, even though I may not have known every individual on the team, that did not necessarily mean that we could not work as a cohesive group. This is a very important skill to have in the job market as very few jobs require one to work as a sole individual. Rather, one must answer to those who are above them in the job ladder, give instructions to those who are below them, and work cohesively with those on the same levels. I believe the improvements made by me in team work will greatly serve me in future work experiences. Through my experiences both at work and in school, I have learned time management. Working nearly 50 hours a week while taking 16 credits has forced me to plan out my day second by second and to prioritize what needs to be done now and what can be put off until a later time. This is also a very important skill in the workplace. As the world moves faster and faster people need to communicate more quickly and deadlines become tighter. Those who are able to manage their time wisely have a distinct advantage over those who are not. Through my Vice Presidency position, I have learned how to go through all stages of putting a project together and making sure all of the pieces are ready prior to the execution of the project. Attached below are links to my CV and Resumé which outline a majority of my experiences over the last year and a few previous years as well.

CV

Resumé

Artifact

Screen Shot 2016-04-13 at 1.13.56 PM

The above picture, though simple, is the result of hours of work and repetition. This graph is a part of a math project assigned to me. The goal of the project was to examine the ways in which polar functions interact in the cartesian planes. In order to make this graph, a software called matlab, a programming tool, was used. To generate the picture, the coding language for matlab was required to be learned, although at a basic level, and many tries were taken in order to ensure that all elements showed up on the graph correctly. While this one graph is not a significant part of the project, for me it was significant because it was my first successful attempt at this programming language, after hours of tinkering around trying to make all of the elements show up. Through the creation of this graph I have learned that patience is truly a virtue and one that I must work at everyday in order to ensure that I can succeed through the challenges of life.

G.O.A.L.S.

[ “G.O.A.L.S.” is a place where students write about how their planned, current, and future activities may fit into the Honors & Scholars G.O.A.L.S.: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement. For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.

Global Awareness: Students cultivate and develop their appreciation for diversity and each individual’s unique differences. For example, consider course work, study abroad, involvement in cultural organizations or activities, etc .
Original Inquiry: Honors & Scholars students understand the research process by engaging in experiences ranging from in-class scholarly endeavors to creative inquiry projects to independent experiences with top researchers across campus and in the global community. For example, consider research, creative productions or performances, advanced course work, etc.
Academic Enrichment: Honors & Scholars students pursue academic excellence through rigorous curricular experiences beyond the university norm both in and out of the classroom.
Leadership Development: Honors & Scholars students develop leadership skills that can be demonstrated in the classroom, in the community, in their co-curricular activities, and in their future roles in society.
Service Engagement: Honors & Scholars students commit to service to the community.]

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.]

Artifacts

[Artifacts are the items you consider to be representative of your academic interests and achievements. For each entry, include both an artifact and a detailed annotation.  An annotation is a reflective description of the artifact that attempts to communicate its significance.  For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

About Me

IMG_1732

Hello, my name is Basel Anani. I was born in July of 1997 in Salt Lake City, although I spent my early childhood in various cities in Utah, the majority of my childhood and adaloscence was spent in Boise, ID.  Currently I live in Plain City, OH located just outside of Dublin, OH.

Education has always been a large part of my life and my parents have done a lot to give me the best education possible. As a result, I attended non-traditional schools all the way through high school.  I attended Renaissance High School, a magnet school which limits each class to 250 students per year and had a focus on the International Baccalaureate Program, specifically the Diploma program. This school and program were both focused on bringing the college campus to the classroom. Because of this experience and other programs I was apart of throughout my school years the transition to college was not at all difficult. Despite the similarity in the ways classes were run, I have found that the atmosphere in college is much different than that of high school.

In college I have found myself much more in control of my decisions and my destiny as a whole and have found that I have had to motivate myself to do what is required of me rather than have to rely on someone else to do so. Before, I used to have to go to class because I would have had to face some consequence such as failure of a class or suspension, however, a large majority of my classes do not require attendance and it is up to me to go and attend all of the lectures so that I can get the grade I am striving for.

In the past I have been very active in service projects such as volunteering at a local hospital and assisting in the Special Olympics. These experiences have helped change who I am as a person. I have learned not to take things for granted anymore, especially my mental health. These experiences have also shown me how important community service is to keeping a community going. Through the many tasks assigned to me at the hospital I realized that I was helping make the hospital more efficient and ensuring that more resources could be committed to actually helping the patients.

Diversity has also been a major part of my life. My parents have attempted to promote diversity in life through travels and I have been to many places in the world. My travels to the Middle East have been the most eye-opening for me. Many people view the Middle East through the context of the UAE (United Arab Emirates) where there are a bunch of large towers with camels roaming between them. However, what the people generally don’t see are the effects of years of civil war and conflict in general. Those who are lucky enough to have a place to call home generally reside in refugee camps where they are rationed out food and water on a daily basis and aid is constantly being cut off from those camps by higher political powers who wish to starve them into submission. The health conditions are also poor in those areas. Malaria is rampant as are the effects of malnutrition such as kwashiorkor. As a pre-medical student I hope one day to travel to the Middle East to assist these people with their medical needs so that they can at least have one less worry in their lives.

Due to the horrors and poverty I have seen caused by war, I can be considered a pacifist in some ways. I am of the belief that war is completely unnecessary and that diplomacy should be the only route to solving conflict between differing idealistic parties.

 

Strengths

After taking the Gallup StrengthsFinder Test, I found that my top 5 strengths were, Empathy, Self-Assurance, Activator, Developer, and Command respectively.

 

Although I found some of these difficult to believe at first, it is clear to see how each of these plays a role in my life. Empathy, my top strength was one I thought to be one of my weaknesses going into the strengthsfinder test however, upon reflection, I can see how empathy, described as the ability to make people feel accepted, played a role in my volunteering activities at St. Alphonsus hospital. The main goal as a volunteer there was to help people both physically, taking patients from department to department or to their vehicles to be dismissed, and emotionally, saying kind and comforting words as the volunteers assisted the patients. Without empathy as a strength, I doubt that the patients would feel as welcome and supported during their time of struggle than if I were incapable of showing that I understood and accepted the physical and emotional strife many of the patients were experiencing.

 

Self-Assurance was one of the strengths I was not surprised to see on the list. This has been a quality which I have been trying to develop in myself since I entered middle school. The days in which people’s words would get to me and make me unstable are long gone. Nowadays, if someone were to make fun of me, I know I that I would be able to shrug it off and take the insults as flattery. Having self-assurance as a strength has been very important to my success as a person, now I am more social and sociable rather than being the introvert that I once was because I am more confident in myself and my abilities than I was at an earlier stage of life.

 

Activator and Command both seemed to tie together with the self assurance aspect of my life. Because of my growth in self-confidence, I have been able to expand my roles in society and in simple projects as well. Instead of taking a backseat, I am confident enough in myself to take a leadership role in most activities I participate in, the strength of command. Whether it be in the Special Olympics where I helped assign people to stations and helped direct traffic to various events or in the hospital, where I was given various tasks by various departments and told to spread them among the volunteer organization. Self-Assurance helped me develop a grasp of command by allowing to be more confident in myself and thus making others more confident in my decision making abilities. Activator was also a strength developed through self-assurance. Activator was defined as someone who disliked constant second-guessing and formulating and was more of a take-action-now type of individual. Developing as an activator has allowed me to complete projects in a timely-fashion and even ahead of schedule. This has assisted both in my academics and in life away from school as well. Less late assignments led me to better grades and less stress on my self, and timely completion of projects led to my constant promotion throughout the volunteer department with more responsibility resting on my shoulders.

Seeing the results of this test has really assisted me in confirming the path I am on right now towards medical school. It is good to know I have the ability to actually care for patients helps quell my fears that sometimes I just want to be a doctor for the money. Self-Assurance as a strength lets me know that I am able to keep my head up through the next few years of college and medical school as I am sure that I will face challenges both inside and outside the classroom with classes getting progressively harder and people all around me dropping their dreams of medical school because they view the task as too difficult. Having activator and command strengths both makes me feel confident in my ability to pursue future goals and also plants a seed of worry. As a cardiovascular surgeon, my career of choice, a patient’s life is almost certainly always in my hands. And although being an activator and capable of command may mean that I am generally efficient, it also means that may have the tendency to make rash decisions. This is an effect of the activator and command strengths that I will look to avoid. Lastly, the strength of developer is also increasingly valuable to have and boosts my confidence in my ability to pursue my goals. Developer means that I am able to make people around me better which complements empathy in a way. This lets me know that when in charge of a team whether in classroom activities, work, or simple extracurricular activities, I will be able to make the most of every person in the group by getting to know their skill set and their limitations. This ability will be extremely valuable in the operating room when 4 or 5 people have to work fluidly with one patient.

 

 

 

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.]