Throughout my entire life, I have been very involved with sports, but my main two were soccer and swimming. During my junior year of high school, some guys from the swim team and I wanted to start a water polo club because all of the other schools in our conference had a team except for us and we wanted something to do during the spring season. We did everything that the administration told us we had to do. We got over fifty signatures of people saying that they were interested in joining and we found a teacher to sponsor the club, but the athletic and activities director turned us down. The next year, we did the same thing and got turned down again.

When I arrived at the Ohio State University, I knew that I wanted to stay involved in sports, whether it was club or intramural. I had never even thought about playing water polo here until the activities fair when I saw their booth. Even then though, I didn’t really want to join because it was a new sport to me and I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I was excited to try it in high school because we were all going to learn together, but now I have no idea how good these players are. Despite my fear of being humiliated, a couple days later I went to my first water polo practice ever. I was relieved to find out that I wasn’t the the only one playing for the first time. Obviously there were some very talented players on the team, but I was glad I wouldn’t be struggling to learn the sport all alone. Throughout the semester, I got much closer with all of the guys on the team and my improvement was unbelievable. Now I am still definitely not a star, but by the time our conference tournament came around at the end of the season, I was one of the first players to come of the bench. Joining the water polo team was one of the best decisions that I’ve made here at Ohio State because it taught me to face my fears and try new things. The sport is a lot of fun and I cannot wait to see how much I improve in the next three years.

As a first year STEM EE Scholar, I was given the opportunity to help with the spectacular program, WOW (Wonders of Our World). I was very excited to be working with young children because this last summer I was a swim team coach and in charge of the 8 & Under age group. It was a lot of work, but I had the time of my life and loved all of their crazy personalities and learning the leadership skills and patience required when working with young kids. With WOW, every week I go with a few other Ohio State students to Columbus elementary schools to do science experiments and demonstrations with the students. The goal of the program is to travel to these schools that don’t have as many resources and to show the kids that science is fun and exciting.

I am have been helping with WOW for about a month now and I already love it. So far, I have worked with 2nd, 3rd, and 5th graders, all of which require a lot of patience because they are all so eager to do the experiment and ask questions. Working with the kids and hearing their ideas is really fun and some of the things they have to say is really funny. In these weeks I have noticed that the imaginations of these young students are very much alive and I believe that is a major component in being successful in whatever you do. The excitement on the kids’ faces when they finally get their clay boat to float or when they guess what is in the mystery box is very rewarding. The leadership skills and patience that I have learned with WOW are both very important things to have in not only school and the business world, but also everywhere you go.