OA in Taylor Tower (2015-2016)

Many people do not know exactly what the Office Assistant position is, and some who do underestimate it’s importance. Being an OA is so much more than handing out toilet paper and renting out movies. Working as an OA you help build a community within a residence hall and help to protect that community. Beyond the financial reward, Office Assistants learn invaluable professional skills that they can use as a stepping stone to other jobs. As an OA this past year I developed multiple professional skills and helped to propel myself on to another position within the university as a Summer Conference Housing Assistant.

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Welcome to my Honors & Scholars e-Portfolio

My name is Will Coleman, an Aerospace Engineering major at The Ohio State University. I was born in Hartford Connecticut but moved to a small town in Western North Carolina when I was four years old. Raised in the South afforded me special experiences to experience the great outdoors as well as grow in small classroom environments. Until my freshman year at Ohio State I had never been in a class with more than 25 people at one time, which helped me to build a strong educational foundation. I attended Tri-County Early College High School where I earned my Associates Degree in college transfer as well as my High School Diploma. While there I was fortunate enough to be one of three interns at the local Snap-On Tools plant where I worked extensively with the quality department. While in the quality department I gained an appreciation for professionalism and learned how to apply math and science to the real world. Not only was I an intern at Snap-On during my High School career, but I was also heavily involved in my school and community through numerous school positions, clubs and community service organizations such as Toys for Tots and Big Brothers Big Sisters.

During my time at The Ohio State I hope to learn how to thrive in a bigger environment and learn how to be a more well rounded student and person. I hope that during my time here I can earn an internship with an aeronautics/aerospace company which upon graduation may turn into a long and successful career. I also plan on taking at least one major between business and history (possibly both), to help me in my future endeavors. It is my ultimate goal that once I have enjoyed a successful career in which I will fly in an aircraft that I had a large part in designing/creating I can retire and become a High School teacher of math and physics. This stems from the inspiration of my physics teacher (as this was essentially his life path but with chemical engineering) and from my passion to help people, I see retiring into teaching is my way of giving back and helping a future generation become successful.

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.]

G.O.A.L.S.

During my freshman year at Ohio State I have experienced and accomplished so much more than I had ever imagined. I feel that, of the G.O.A.L.S. that Honors and Scholars strive to represent, my freshman year could best be representative of the Leadership Development and Academic Enrichment.

After living in the southern mountains of western North Carolina for 14 years, moving to the heart of a big city like Columbus was a big culture shock. There have been so many great experiences (and a few not so great) that have helped me to grow as a student and as a person. However, I find my most significant and most valuable growth have been as a professional. Beginning in the fall with a job as an OA I began to develop my natural interpersonal skills and refine them into a professional asset. Having the refined ability to speak with people is key to any job, from impressing in an interview to working with coworkers on a project, communication is key in any job. Being an OA also taught me how to conduct myself more professionally and how to work with an array of people from different backgrounds, experience, cultures and majors. These same interpersonal and professional skills that I acquired and developed helped me to become a Summer Conference Housing Assistant for this upcoming summer. The SCH job is similar to the OA position but more involved and much more professional, requiring heightened maturity and professionalism. This job will also develop skills I can use in interviews and in a job setting to help me become a better employee and coworker. Both of this positions and what they have done for me have helped me to develop my leadership skills during my freshman year. Being able to adapt to situations in the OA job and deal with conferences in the SCH job, I feel exemplify this the best. It is through opportunities like this that I plan to continue to build my professional portfolio and make myself a more marketable employee. Leadership skills are just one of many I hope to acquire, solidify and exemplify by the time I am finished at Ohio State, using it as a stepping stone to propel myself on to bigger and better opportunities for myself and my family.

Being at Ohio State offers numerous chances to learn outside the classroom and build a foundation of knowledge in unusual ways. When I went off to college one of the best pieces of advice my father (a business major during his time at USF) gave me was to, at minimum, take a personal finance class. That if nothing else I should learn to be financially literate. This past semester I did just that and I believe it will make a huge difference in my life. Although the class is a bit trivial at times and the exams were not the most effective, the information I have taken away from it is invaluable. The concepts of personal finance are extremely easy, basic knowledge of how things work and what has been proven to work best, and yet many people have no knowledge of finance. This lack of financial literacy costs people hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime. By choosing to take the class, one that has no benefit in terms of a GE or a minor, I helped educate myself and set myself up for a more financially stable future. Taking a class such as this is what I believe to be a prime example of academic enrichment. I plan on taking other classes like this, hopefully applying a minor in economics because of my fascination with it, and taking as many opportunities to enrich my own knowledge as much as possible during my time at the university. Education is one of the most valuable and powerful tools a person can have, and I see the four or five years spent in college as a time to acquire as much knowledge as possible so that wherever I find myself, I can apply what I have learned to do my best.

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.]

About Me

 Scholar (2)

With my family coming predominately from Wisconsin and myself technically being from Connecticut I was raised in a northern household in the heart of the south. While at a younger age I had trouble fitting in, I began to adapt and learn where I fit in, where my niche was. I learned to make connections and my own personal “culture” became a mix of northern and southern. However, these revelations and combinations of culture did not occur overnight. It took nearly all of the 14 years I lived in North Carolina to fully understand and embrace who I was, how I was raised and where I was raised. This is not to say that I do not have things to left to learn, my grandpa once said “A day in which you did not learn anything is a day wasted.”, which is in-part why I chose The Ohio State University. Being raised in a small rural town I was never in a class with more than 25 students at once and my class size never exceeded 50, in-fact, the number of Ohio State incoming freshman in 2015 outnumber the total number of students in my hometown’s county. I knew in my college search that I needed a school in which I would be exposed to large numbers of people from diverse backgrounds if I wanted to be successful in my future endeavors, enter Ohio State. 

Growing up my grandpa served as a second father to me, imparting life lessons and mentalities before he passed in 2012. He taught me how I wanted to live my life, the kind of person I wanted to be and how to become that. I unfortunately did not realize this until many months after he died, which is one of my biggest regrets. I admit and acknowledge that I handled his death poorly, I allowed my personal and academic life to falter and suffer. However, hardship is the fire in which resiliency is forged, and I discovered more about myself in my hardest times than I had in all the happy ones before.

For High School I had a plethora of options, I could go to one of two local high schools and play sports or I could choose to forge a new path and try my hand at the county’s early college, forgoing competitive sports in favor of academics. I chose the early college and it remains to this day one of the best decisions I have ever made. I was introduced to more opportunities than I could have ever imagined, I became an integral part of my schools beta club, an intern at the local Snap-On Tools plant, an active member of my school and local community, as well as so much more.

I have lived an interesting life, full of changes and unique situation that I have had to adapt to or overcome. Mine has not been a fairy tale, nor has it been a sad story, but regardless it is my story, my background and my path to where I am today. I may have regrets, but I would not go back and change a single thing from my past.

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During the course of my Scholars survey class we were given the opportunity to take the Clifton Strengths Quest Quiz that helps you determine your top traits. Out of thirty two possible strengths the quiz determines your top five, mine being; 1.  Context, 2. Harmony, 3. Restorative, 4. Belief, and 5. Arranger. These qualities are your personalized strengths determined from the quiz, and embracing them can lead to a more productive and happy life. By embracing my strengths I can do better in college as a means of achieving my goals of a future in which I am happy and successful.

For example, my number one was Context, which means I look to the past for answers about the future. I unknowingly used this inside and outside of the classroom in looking to past assignments to develop understanding for future ones. It effects my personal and professional life as I often reflect on my past and the past of others to determine what the bet course of action could be. For my goals of being successful and happy I can look to what others have done in the past to become successful in aerospace engineering to help guide me to a similar result.

This also fits in with my Arranger and Restorative strengths as I enjoy fixing things, both physical and otherwise, in the most efficient way possible. This will also help me in my academic and professional life as I can problem solve effectively and help groups come to a better consensus. This increased ability to problem solve obviously helps when doing assignments, but could also help when solving problems at a job or in my personal life. My ability to mediate in groups helps in my value to group work as should conflict arise, it would fit into my strength to resolve it.

The Belief strength is more helpful in grounding me to who I am as a person, in a sense, it anchors my personal life to help me grow and expand in my academic and professional lives. However I do maintain an open mind to having my opinions challenged as well as possibly even changed as I accept that I do not know everything and that I am not always correct. Which could possibly be part of my Harmony strength, because while I would disagree with its aspect on avoiding conflict, I do accept that I like everything to be at peace and working as efficiently as possible.