I am writing this as a part of my Honors Contract, but also as a reflection for myself to see how far I have come since starting my college career. In this post, I will be reflecting upon the goals that I set for myself in the G.O.A.L.S. post from last year.

The global awareness goals that I had set included being a member of the Russian Club. Shortly after joining the club, I realized that it was ar more social and less focused on heritage than I would have liked it to be so I stopped attending the meetings. However, I am still working on my global awareness in other ways. I still continue to speak Russian at home and will take a heritage Russian language course to brush up on my reading and writing skills. I have taken part in other diversifying activities such as attending the annual Taste of OSU hosted by the Office of International Affairs. By attending this event both years, I was able to immerse myself in other culters through food. I also took Anthropology 2202H, cultural anthropology, and was able to further appreciate smaller aspects of other cultures that one would not normally think about.

The original inquiry goal that I had set for myself was looking into research opportunities in the dental clinic. While I have not yet found a research topic that I would feel passionate about working on, I am still actively looking and exploring the numerous opportunities available to me. However, I have still taken part of the original inquiry process through my coursework. In the lab of Biology 1113H, we were tasked in performing The Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment (PARE) project. The PARE project is a crowd-sourcing monitoring system that engages students across the country to systematically test and report the prevalence of tetracycline-resistant bacteria from the soil at diverse geographic sites. After the testing was done, a research poster of our findings was made. I thoroughly enjoyed that project and making the poster as I got to see a part of the scientific process that I had not yet gotten a chance to see.

For my academic enrichment goal, I have been committing myself to my rigorous schedule. As a biology major on a Pre-Dental track, I have a lot of other commitments that I need to be thinking about to be a successful applicant to dental school. I selected the biology major as it is a science and I enjoy that, but also it fits very well with the requirements of courses that dental schools want before you apply. Some courses I enjoy more than others, for example, I am enjoying organic chemistry now more than I ever did anything in general chemistry, as it is more like learning a new language. The GE courses I am taking are like ‘mental breaks’ for me. While some GE courses are more challenging than others, they are meant to be more enjoyable and easier than major/minor courses. My favorite GEs so far have been Anthropology 2202H and Classics 2220H.

I believe that I am very involved and have done great things for my leadership development in the past year. I am now an Honors Community Advocate (HCA) in Taylor Tower working with the Honors and Scholars department to be a peer leader and provide a sense of community through program planning in an honors residence hall. I am also secretary of Buckeye Campaign Against Suicide (BCAS) and plan on being on the executive board again next year. I am also a member of the Honors Community Council (HCC), which serves to provide programming for the G.O.A.L.S. for all honors students, and the National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH), which is an elite residence life honorary comprised of the top 1% of leaders on campus. I am still a general member of the Pre-Dental club but plan on running for an executive board position for next year. While there could be more leadership roles I could be participating in, I need to keep a balance of academics and extracurriculars and prioritize the leadership roles and commitments that are important and valuable to me rather than stretching myself thin by being on too many things that I do not really care about.

For my service engagement goal, I have been volunteering at various things. I do not have a volunteer position that I do regularly, such as volunteering at the hospital (too many people do that to stand out by also doing that, and I do not think that hospital volunteers make a large impact in their setting), but the volunteer experiences that I have had have been very rewarding. Through the Pre-Dental club, I have volunteered with the College of Dentistry’s Continuing Education office and have helped check people in and clean up after CE lectures several times. I have also been to Star House, a homeless youth shelter in the Columbus area, to help organize their supplies, and I have been to the Columbus Furniture bank and helped to build 14 wooden bed frames in one and a half hours to be used to those in need. This past fall I also volunteered with BCAS at the local Hot Chocolate 5K/15K by helping set up a water checkpoint and to hand out chocolate to those participating in the run. I also participated in the Pre-Dental Clubs ‘Trick or Treat for Precious Metals” where I went with other pre-dental students to various dental officed ‘trick or treating’ for the precious metal scrap metal that they remove from peoples fillings to be melted down, recycled, and the proceeds donated to KidSMILES, a volunteer pediatric dental clinic in the Columbus area. For the future, I plan to find a more long term volunteer position that I will still find enjoyable and rewarding. However, I want this volunteer position to be something that I really believe in, not something that I’m doing just to put on my resume.

All in all, I believe that I am on track and where I need to be in my college career. While there are things that have set me back a little bit, and something that may have not gone the way I wanted them to go, I have my goals and path for my future in mind and I will fight to get to where I want to be. I am looking forward to the next two years.