My second semester at Ohio State has been filled with ups and downs.  The biggest down was the death of my uncle in the middle of the semester.  It threw me into a pit of depression for about a week.  It was difficult focusing on classes and midterms, but I had to pull through for my grades.  However, probably a huge upside to my uncle’s death was finding what career I want to pursue.  Since my uncle died from pancreatic cancer, I want to pursue a career in cancer research to help change the world for the better.  I changed my major to Molecular Genetics and have been doing lots of research about future careers in cancer research.  My classes this semester have been harder, but I’ve still pulled through and managed to get pretty nice grades.  As my first year of college comes to a close, I like to recap and look at all of the friends I made, all of the clubs I joined, and how I’ve changed as a person.  I’m stronger in my faith and in my career choices, and I learned to appreciate the small things in life because you never know when they will disappear.

At the beginning of the semester, my biggest problem was finding myself in a new community of unfamiliar faces and outgoing individuals who far exceed my performances; I know think that I’ve taken my first steps and found my path. The Scholar’s seminar has given me a lot of insight into different career prospects and other opportunities at Ohio State that I’ve used to search for my calling in life. I’ve now begun researching for research on campus to get my feet wet and delve into the world of scientific discovery, all to find out if research is right for me.  Before Ohio State, my faith life was very weak and misguided.  Now, my new friends have helped me in my path of faith and have guided me onto a path towards enlightenment.  Experiencing college level classes was not new to me because I enrolled in college courses in high school; however, the college environment was not something I quickly absorbed.  In the end, I managed my time to the best of my ability and planned all of my events accordingly.  Even though it’s been only one semester, I feel like it’s been a great start to the next 4 yeas of my life.  I realize now that it will only get tougher as college progresses, and these skills I have picked up in this first semester will be great tools to success in my new major, Zoology.