Welcome to my Honors & Scholars e-Portfolio

 

Hi, I’m Clare Coons and I am from Centerville, OH which is located near Dayton, OH.  I am a freshman at The Ohio State University.  I am currently an undecided major but I am leaning towards medical fields and health professions.  I am thinking about looking into research.  Someday I hope to be able to support myself well and to be passionate about what I do for a living.  The human body is very complex and interesting to me and relates a lot to the world around us.  I am a very hard-working and organized person.  In this ePortfolio I will be showing more about myself and how I grow as a person here.  I am very excited to be a part of this wonderful Buckeye community.

Year in Review

Throughout my first year in college, I have definitely grown as a person and been impacted.  With making the huge change that college is, I have developed, progressed, and learned a lot about myself.   When I came into college, I did not really know what to expect but I was excited.  I was scared about meeting new people and making new friends but I was very excited about the amount of opportunities available.  Nervousness hit me because of the size of the university.  With my involvement in the STEM Scholars Program I have been able to meet a multitude of different people and it has also made the large university seem a little smaller.  I have met many people with many varying majors and interests.  It has greatly diversified and opened my eyes to the many opportunities available.  Being an undecided major, I think seeing all the different majors has helped me narrow down what I would like to pursue.  I knew that I want to do something in the general direction of science and math; I just wasn’t sure what.  Being able to talk to many different people from engineers, math, health careers, and many more has helped me become closer to choosing a major I am interested in.  I am now certain that I want to become interested in a career in the health and medical field.

        Through STEM, there are all different kinds of people which is great but conflicting personalities do arise with such a diverse group of people.  Being involved in STEM Scholars, I have learned to handle conflict much better now and become more tolerant with people.  I’ve gained many group skills and finding times to work with everyone’s busy schedules.  I have also become more aware about the different backgrounds that everyone comes from.  I have become a lot more appreciative of the opportunities and the skills my high school provided me with.  I think it is very important that I have met such a diverse group of people because it is more representative of the population.  Working with all sorts of people is definitely a useful and necessary skill.  

        Moreover, this year I have worked on my study skills.  My first set of midterms in second semester did not go as well as I wanted, so I had to change my study habits.  I had to focus on actually understanding the material and comprehending the explanation behind the answers to practice questions.  I learned that if you need help you should go to office hours and ask questions.  Sometimes it is helpful to talk about concepts and ideas with other people to make sure you fully comprehend.  When times get hard, I have learned to not just give up.  It is better to learn from your mistakes and try and fix them so they do not happen again.

        Furthermore, moving on in my college career, I hope to build upon the skills I have gained this year.  I hope to declare my major next year and find something that I am passionate about.  I hope to keep growing and meeting all different kinds of people.  Next year I hope to get more involved on campus by joining clubs that relate to the medical and health field.  I hope to keep growing and making my time at this university the best possible.   

G.O.A.L.S.

Two of the University Honors & Scholars Center G.O.A.L.S. that I feel are most applicable to my future life and goals are academic enrichment and service engagement. I think service engagement is important in my life because it allows me to help others and be appreciative for everything in my life. I believe it is important to understand different social issues that are present among the community and in society. I think service engagement is so important to me in my life because I want to go into a field that the main goal is to help patients and better their life. In the health field, I believe a main focus is on the betterment and treatment of patients and trying to do as much as possible to positively affect a person’s health. I believe it is very important to help others in your life and do something outside of yourself.   As of now, I am involved in some but not enough service. I enjoy volunteering at a local school and tutoring kids with their math skills. I plan to incorporate service into my life by joining a service club here at OSU, this would be a great chance to find ways to help others. I would love to get an opportunity to volunteer at a hospital or something in the medical field.   I think that joining a club with service would also be a great involvement activity to be in on campus and meet new people. Hopefully, in the next 10 years I will be incorporating service into my life by holding a career where I am helping others on the daily.

Furthermore, the other goal that I feel is very important and applicable to my life is academic enrichment. Doing outside work of the classroom and doing my best work possible in class is very important for success now and the future. I think it is very important to learn and understand the material in core classes that relate to your future career and major. I feel like it is very important to choose something that you are interested in and want to learn about so that you enjoy yourself. In the near future I hope to find a major that I am interested and really intrigues me. I plan to incorporate academic enrichment in my life by choosing classes that interest me. I also hope to shadow some careers in the medical profession because I feel like a great way to see how a certain career works is to see someone actually in the field. Shadowing is a very hands on activity that allows for learning that is hard to get inside a classroom. Also in the future, I hope to go on to more schools, which would benefit me academically. Being a STEM Scholar has allowed me to learn about many different types of careers that I would never have thought about. The program pushes me to attend a multitude of various events relating to all types of fields. Doing well in my academics will help me accomplish future career goals and get to where I want to be in life.

Artifacts

Artifact #1

This artifact is the dance marathon at The Ohio State University in February 2016. The event, Buckeyethon, was created to raise money for Nationwide’s Children’s Hospital for the cancer section specifically. This event was a really great and eye-opening time for me because I felt like I was part of an event that was making a large difference. Seeing the kids was an amazing experience because of their faces and the fun they were having and how special they felt. This event strengthened my belief that I want to go into a medical career because of impactful it can be. The amount of influence that medical fields have on people’s daily lives is enormous and how complex the human body is really fascinating. This event was challenging because it occurred from 8 PM-8 Am the next day, so a lot of exhaustion was felt. But the association with exhaustion was minimal and short compared to the pain and suffering that the kids with cancer experience. I learned that sometimes you may feel like giving up but friends and family will be there to support you and push you on. Seeing the way the event affected so many families was so impactful .

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About Me

 

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My name is Clare Coons and I am a first year at The Ohio State University.  I am from a small family of three in Centerville, OH.  My high school class was about 630 people and it was very competitive.  The school had tons of opportunities that made me very thankful to be able to go there.  Currently I am an undecided major, but I am looking into health professions and medical fields.  The body interests me because it is so complex and many things are still unknown about it.

In high school I ran cross country which taught me a lot about hard work and dedication.  I ran with a team of around 70 girls who taught me how to care about other people.  I can in as a very shy, scared freshman who didn’t talk much, but cross country showed me that a simple act of asking how a person’s run went could change their day.  It taught me that a small act of kindness and motivation can really help a person.  Furthermore, the sport was definitely not easy and fun all the time.  I learned that to succeed you must put in lots of hard work.  You have to go through hard times to get to the good times.  Not only did cross country make me physically stronger, but also mentally.  I learned to push through the tough times were times got hard.  It taught me to push through because there is more left in you than you believe.

Throughout high school I tried to challenge myself by taking difficult math and science courses.  I spent many long nights studying and doing homework.  I have always enjoyed math and science throughout school.  A person who has really inspired my excitement and interest in STEM is my chemistry teacher junior year.  This teacher really made chemistry interesting and made me want to learn more.  Even though the class was difficult and a lot of work, it set me up for success.  I felt like I really learned the material and was provided opportunities to enhance my learning experience.  My teacher explained the content very thoroughly and she was so passionate about the subject that she was inspiring.

I wanted to become a STEM EE scholar because I knew I enjoyed science and mathematic subjects.  I knew that STEM was a growing field except I wasn’t exactly sure what STEM was.  I thought that this program would help me expand my knowledge of the STEM field and maybe help aid me in choosing what I was passionate about.  Also, I thought that it would help to know people that were interested in similar topics as me and to be able to share our experience with each other.  Overall, I am very excited to be a STEM EE scholar and explore the subjects of STEM.

Strengths

My top 5 strengths from the Gallup StrengthsFinder test are restorative, harmony, consistency, developer, and responsibility. Restorative plays a role in my life because I want to do better than what I am at currently doing. In school, I set goals for myself but once I achieve them I want set higher goals. I am a realistic thinker so I set goals that are difficult but still in reach. I analyze what I did wrong to hopefully learn from my mistakes. For example, if I do badly on an exam, I think about how I studied and how to improve for next time. But also in life, I analyze when I had a fight with a friend or family and look at ways to improve or solve the problem. I hope that setting high goals for myself will influence people around me and encourage them. Harmony applies to my life I am a very practical thinker. In life, I think in a systematic way and about the actual task beforehand. In my academics, I am very focused on what has to be done and I approach my assignments in a logical way.  Looking into the future of the next few days, I organize what tasks have to be done each day and when I should set time aside to complete the tasks. Consistency applies to my life because I like routine and schedule. Throughout the week, I like to know where I am supposed to be at certain times and I like to find a schedule that works. I like to know that there is a certain time set aside for certain tasks such as time to exercise or do homework. I am also more enthusiastic about certain aspects of life than others. I like to treat people as equally as possible and enjoy when other people succeed. Developer relates to my life because I enjoy helping other people and I like the way other people think. I appreciate how other people think differently than me and find it interesting how other approach different scenarios. The strength of responsibility applies to my life because I like commitments and knowing that actions are going to act upon. I feel really bad when I do not do something correctly or forget to do something that I said I would do.

Knowing my strengths helps support my future goals. My future goals include going into a career in maybe the medical or health field where science will be very involved. Science fields require a lot of problem solving and approaching problems with new perspectives and my strengths connect to these characteristics, which relates to the strength of restorative. Also in science fields, it is important to be able to work in groups, which applies to developer. My strengths support this future career goal because I appreciate what people have to say and add to the conversation. I also think my strengths support my future goals because I want to be passionate and committed to what I do in the future, which connects to restorative and responsibility.  Science fields and any other career require lots of hard work and I think my strengths will help me achieve my goals.

In the future, my strengths will help me achieve my future goals personally and professionally. In the future, I want to have a career that I am passionate about and I am able to think practically to solve a problem, which restorative applies to. I am focused on actually accomplishing a task and get frustrated when I leave a project unfinished. I think being responsible and reliable will help me in my future goals.  My strengths will help me achieve these goals because I enjoy thinking about problems in different ways. My strengths will also help my future goals to be able to work with a team of people to think about problems. From developer, I enjoy seeing how different people approach different problems and I think appreciating other people’s idea is very important in life. I think my strength of consistency will help me achieve my goals because it allows me a way to keep myself organized and make sure everything gets completed.  I think recognizing my strengths and building upon my strengths will help me achieve my goals in life and be successful.