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Year in Review

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Sophomore Year GOALS

Global Awareness

As someone who hopes to be a global citizen the rest of my life, attending Ohio State has been a great step in that direction. I was able to study abroad my very first semester through the London Honors program. While abroad, I got to explore a new country and a world city on my own while connecting with talented, intelligent, and diverse fellow honors students and professors. I saw fireworks over the River Thames for New Years, toured Shakespeare’s globe theatre, and ate delicious street food. During this time, I became more confident in traveling alone and in my desire to do so. I loved London so much, I will be returning to London for a Maymester study abroad program.

While on campus, my Global Awareness is increased in a few ways. First, I live in the international dorm Morrill Tower, where one of my own roommates and friend, Hayden, is from South Korea. Two of my other roommates are either majoring or minoring in Chinese, and the experiences they share from learning a second language, studying the culture, and even traveling to China has given me a greater understanding than I ever would have without then.

Original Inquiry

As an English major, research wasn’t something that I thought I would be involved in during my time at Ohio State, even though it was something I was interested in pursuing. That quickly changed however when I spoke to individuals that participated in research. Through my OSU survey course when I was an exploration major, I did an interview with one of my mentors from the student organization H2O Church, Brittany Trang. She was a double major in Chemistry and English and was pursuing a senior research thesis in both areas. My second year, when I began the English major as a concentration in Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy, I took ENG 3379, which is an introduction to the concentration. Through the careful guidance of Dr. Kay Halasek, I was able to understand that the writing and literacy habits of others is a worthy and diverse field of study. Now that I am a literature concentration, I study works of literature and evaluate them through methods such as New Criticism, Feminist Critique, and Ecological Criticism in ENG 3398. Although I don’t know if an extended research project is something I’ll have time to pursue on campus, I am more open to the idea of independent study and feel confident that I could pursue it at any point in my learning career.

Academic Enrichment

I believe that my Honors Contract demonstrates my commitment to learning more about my passions while doing so in a challenging environment. With a strong balance of honors classes and upper-level coursework, I believe that I will leave Ohio State with the skills directly applicable to any career I chose and the tools to pursue life-long learning. Although I am still very undecided in my future aspirations, I have big dreams. Some days, I feel confident in my desire to move to New York and try my hand in publishing, where I would hope to be a part of the creation of stories through either editing, managing, or marketing. By taking the course Intro to Literary Publishing this semester, I have been exploring that option further. Other moments, my involvement in Undergraduate Student Government and my love for learning fosters a desire to continue in the realm of academia and pursue a graduate program in higher education. I am also considering law school, as I am currently taking a course in Literature and the Law, where I would hope to study Intellectual Property Copy-write Law. Finally, I have a passion for the visual and performing arts, including music. If I could be an advocate for these programs either through private lobbying or with a nonprofit, I would feel like I am following my passions while impacting others in a positive manner.

Thankfully, the English major, along with my two minors, teach skills that directly translate to any of these experiences, which is why I specifically chose to pursue them. English helps me to be a clear, evocative writer with great knowledge of how to relate to individuals and address different audiences. The business minor gives me the tools to analytically understand different companies and markets, as well as basic accounting, finance, and marketing skills that will be successful in nearly any other career. Finally, throughout my life I hope to be an advocate for improvement in my community, the keys to which are practically taught in a public policy minor.

Leadership Development

My main campus involvements include being a University Ambassador, Athletic Host, member of Undergraduate Student Government, H2O church, and Women’s Glee Club, as well as participating in BuckeyeThon by being a Team Member and modeling in the fall Fashion Show. Each of these involvements allows me to interact with diverse student groups on campus and pursue my many hobbies, passions, and goals.

My two jobs of Ambassador and Host are both through the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. They both give me the opportunity to connect with potential students and be an advocate for Ohio State. I also help in the training of new members which allows me to give constructive feedback and inspires me to continually improve my own tours. These jobs have also made me a better advocate for myself. When having to interact with large groups, often made up adults that are older than myself, it has given me the confidence to approach professors when I need help and feel comfortable building professional relationships with them.

In Undergraduate Student Government I have served in multiple roles, all of which allow me to improve the student experience at Ohio State while interacting with administrators. This year as a deputy director, I oversaw a small group of committee representatives. It was crucial for me to be encouraging and help develop their projects and passions for the organization, while also progressing in my own work. Being involved in H2O Church has helped me stay mentally and spiritually well during my time as a student, and has provided me with a strong understanding of my own values and beliefs. I also served as a small group leader this year, during which I helped plan weekly meetings and met up with women in my small group throughout the week to build deep relationships and provide mentorship. Finally, in Women’s Glee Club, I get to continue one of my passions from high school, choral singing, while also being a member of the communications committee. Here, I practice professional communication through weekly emails, as well as helped publish, write, and design our biyearly newsletter, The Medley.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t yet know what my future career will be, but I do know the student organizations I’m involved in at Ohio State are giving me diverse professional and creative experiences that I will be able to highlight and build upon in any future profession.

Service Engagement

Because of my involvement in other activities on campus the only regular service organization I participate in is H2O’s Community Engagement. This occurs once a month and is an opportunity for our church to give back to the Columbus community which has grown and supported us so much. Some of our partners include She Has a Name, The Bridge, The Five Thousand, the Miracle Garden, and Stowe Missions. However, I do think involvement in USG is a service to Ohio State students. The work we do is often thankless, as many organization’s and individual’s work is, but the joy I get from students appreciating our hard work, such as reusable to-go boxes, bike share programs, or extended café hours during finals- even if they don’t know that our advocacy helped these initiatives- makes the hard work worth it.

Artifact 1: Informational Interview

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Brittany Trang, Senior majoring in Chemistry and English at The Ohio State University

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When and why did you choose this major?  So I always loved reading and writing and I think somewhere in high school I decided I wanted to work in the publishing industry, I wanted to write but I also wanted to be either an agent or an editor, and so that’s when I decided I wanted to be in the publishing industry. And basically to do that you have to take a usually unpaid internship in new York city which is not super financially fun, so my parents were worried, my parents were not excited about the idea of me doing that and were worried that I would be living in their basement for the rest of my life so they encouraged me to choose a second, more financially stable major. And I had taken AP Chemistry and done some chemistry projects and figured that I was pretty decent at chemistry, I didn’t know how much you could do with that but I went to a research camp for a week before my senior year of high school and I got to see what research was like and decided that I would probably like it and yah that’s how I chose my major.

Do you feel you made the right choice of major(s)? Yah I do. I never though about switching my majors and I really like the balance that it gives me between creativity and analytical thinking and they also compliment each other very well in ways that I did not anticipate when I chose them.

What was your favorite major course, and why? For English my favorite course has probably been porbably my intermediate creative writing special topics class on the YA novel. We got to read like 6 YA novels for the first half of the class and discuss them which was fun to read fun books for homework, then the second half of the class we were critiquing people’s novel drafts, so we each wrote 40 pages of a young adult novel and we would critique other people’s novels and it was really fun to read what other people had written and it was fun to get feedback on your own personal work. Any fun ones for chemistry? Probably my favorite would be instrumental analysis lecture, I took it last spring and so it’s basically the last lecture class you take and the professor is really focused on real-world applications and he’s, first of all he’s super awesome, so yah he makes everything super relevant to people and says to people you know this year or next year you’ll be out in the world doing these things and you need to know them, so I feel like I learned a lot in that class.

How engaged/accessible are faculty in your department? I would say that the chemistry faculty are pretty accessible, I’d say that they’re pretty open about their office hours. I don’t know I’ve never been that engaged with my English professors somehow, I don’t know if they feel less accessible or if I feel like I need them less because I don’t have pressing problems to come to them with normally. Do you go to your chemistry advisor or your English advisor more often or is it the same person? So I have three different advisor, my honors advisor that I go to for class things, my English advisor I go to for things related to my English major, wondering about classes or thesis, but my chemistry advisor I had him as a professor and he’s an amazing, really grandfatherly type guy, and we’ve gone out to lunch sometimes and all my friends have him, so sometimes we drop in on him sometimes, so I definitely see him more and he’s more personal.

What kinds of extracurricular experiences (research, internships, co-ops, student organizations, study abroad, etc) have you had? Why did you choose those particular opportunities? How have they benefitted you? What are your plans for after graduation? Wow it’s like a personal statement! So I’ll go with my major related things, my second semester of freshmen year I got involved with research, I started researching in a materials chemistry lab on desensitized solar cells, and that was my first research experience here and I really liked it and I’ve been in the lab ever since. So it gave me a lot of really good experience and introduced me to how to do research and how to understand it. And then after my sophomore year I applied for and got an internship in Germany and it was a Chemistry research one and it was super great to be able to combine study abroad and with an internship because I would not have had time to study abroad otherwise to be able to learn about a completely different culture and live in a different place and yah get to know that place as if it were my home. So I really enjoyed that and then the summer after my junior year I had an internship in Berkley, California in the national lab there and it was super great to have an experience that would be like what my life would be like if I had a career there and I really enjoyed the atmosphere there. For English, I have done a lot of scientific writing and editing. The first time was after my freshmen year I attempted to help a graduate student edit his manuscript a little bit and I think they took some of the changes, and then I took a scientific writing class my sophomore year and for a final project I updated our research groups websites and wrote a lot of copy for that and then that year I started doing a lot of editing on my group members general articles and I eventually got to be a co-author on one of them and so it’s been really fun getting to work on real, actual people’s articles. And then grad school, I am currently applying to graduate school for chemistry and am hoping to pursue a Ph.D in a field that’s similar to what I’ve been currently been researching in, materials for energy. Other extra-curricular activities I’ve done include academic team which is something I did in high school and was really excited to continue in college, I was really involved in the club and was vice-president during my sophomore year but I’ve got kind of busy and eventually stopped being very involved. And I’m also involved in H2O and am treasurer of H2O students which I am really excited about.

  1. How did you find this interviewee, and why did you choose to interview this person? The individual I interviewed, Brittany Trang, is a member of my small group and team through the on-campus church H2O. We connected multiple times over the semester and had already talked about career goals and life in general so I figured a more structured conversation such as the informational interview might be interesting.
  2. How has this interview influenced your major and/or career exploration? I already knew why Brittany chose her majors and so the interview itself didn’t influence my major too much but she has definitely got my thinking about adding either a double major or a minor if I decide to pursue English. Being financially stable is something that is as important to me as it was to Brittany however if I decide to pursue publishing as a career I feel confident that my passion for the career and my determination will make me successful. However, I don’t think it would be a bad idea to be very proficient and/or knowledgeable in another field because, if nothing else, it gives you a diverse background and allows for strength in editing/writing about a specific topic.
  3. Did you learn anything unexpected from the interview? If so, what? If not, which ideas did the interview reinforce? It was interesting to hear about how well she felt that Chemistry and English complimented one another. Although I figured they would allow for a nice academic balance, it’s encouraging for her to talk about how much her English classes have aided her in the analytical world of Chemistry.
  4. What do you feel you still need to learn about this major/career before being able to make a confident decision? I feel like the primary reason I have not declared English is not so much more information about the major itself or associated careers but my lingering interests in other majors and careers outside of English’s reach. I’m hoping my classes next semester will solidify my interest in this major. However, I definitely could use more information on various internship opportunities for either publishing or law that would make my parents hopefully less nervous than Brittany’s were about me living in their basement for the rest of my life.
  5. Which major exploration tools/activities/resources that you utilized this semester were most helpful to you and why? I really enjoyed how thoroughly we got to know all the different majors at Ohio State. The list of courses to Explore Majors in our handbook was very intriguing and I loved the overview videos we watched every week which helped me narrow down my interests considerably. I wish we would have taken more time to cover the various policies, procedures, and resources. Some weeks it felt like we blew past them and during the weeks that we actually discussed the questions in the handbook and talked about the various resources rather than just answering the questions and moving on, were very helpful and made me more interested in utilizing the resources.

 

 

About Me

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I’m a freshman in The Ohio State University’s Honor’s program, from Canton, Ohio. Currently, I am a part of the University Exploration program as I continue to explore major and career options.  On campus, I am involved in Undergraduate Student Government (USG) as a Committee Representative, Women’s Glee Club, the Ohio Show Band, and H2O Church.

I attended an arts academy within my public high school that allowed me to continue rigorous academic classes while perusing my artistic interests, primarily vocal music and theatre. A few formulative experiences were participating in my high school’s musicals and plays, attending the Congress of Future Medical Leaders in 2014, attending the Carnegie Hall Honors Performance series in 2016, and being my high school’s representative for a local newspaper, The Repository. While I originally intended to double major in vocal performance and another area in college, I widened my search due to interests in science, business, politics, and other various humanities.

While my primary current goal is to narrow down my interests and select a major to pursue along with a couple career options to keep in mind, my long-term goals include participating in an educational internship as well as continue studying abroad, which I will kick off very soon as a member of the London Honors program. I am currently leaning towards pursuing a career in either the publishing industry or becoming an intellectual property lawyer, however I have not declared a major yet and hope that classes next semester will solidify my interests in an English major and a Business or Legal Foundations of Society minor.

During my time at The Ohio State University, I hope not only to continue staying involved in the arts, further develop marketable skills for my chosen career path, and, through USG, help make OSU an inclusive, welcoming environment for all students that will feel like home.

G.O.A.L.S.

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[ “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

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[“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

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[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.]