Dunn Sport and Wellness Scholars (DSWS) has provided many opportunities for me to make connections personally and professionally. Personally, I have made many lifelong friendships with people who unconditionally support me. I have also made many professional connections with people in the community especially through my role as philanthropy chair on the Leadership Council. I have had to contact many community leaders to find opportunities for the scholars to provide service. DSWS has also helped me find my two current jobs within recreational sports as Learn-To-Swim Instructor and Adapted Recreation Instructor and helped me connect with my bosses for those jobs. DSWS has given me pre-med mentors who are third and fourth year scholars that have helped me tremendously with building my professional resume. DSWS has connected me with my STEP (Second Year Transformational Experience) advisor and former Director of Rec. Sports, Dr. Don Stenta who has helped me transform my leadership skills throughout this year. Dunn Sport and Wellness Scholars has taught me the importance of making the most of every moment. I have realized that you can always go through the motions, but you won’t get anything out of it so you have to be thoughtful in every moment of every day if you want the most out of it. DSWS far exceeded my expectations with the connections I made and all the opportunities I was provided. Being in DSWS has also given me a great group of people to hear other perspectives from which has opened my mind to taking in other peoples thoughts and ideas and changing mine. Being a part of the Leadership Council has helped me become a more collaborative leader by working with others to plan events for DSWS. DSWS has given me opportunities to be reflective with others as well as on our own. This has helped me become more self-reflective in my life which in turn has made me a more open-minded, calm, and intentional person. These skills will continue to help me in my personal and professional life as I will always be working in a team, I will always need to self-reflect to improve myself, and I need to be open-minded to hearing other ideas and perspectives and willing to consider them and use them to make my own ideas better.

The Dunn Sport and Wellness Scholars (DSWS) program has helped me develop strong leadership skills and teamwork skills. Through DSWS, I have had the role of a “parent” or mentor for the first years in DSWS as well as a position on Leadership Council. Through both of these, I have participated in a lot of group activities that helped me learn how to work in a group as well as be an adaptive leader. Both of these skills are very important in college and in life. Throughout my collegiate career, I will continue to use the teamwork skills I have learned, such as how to work most effectively as a group toward a common goal, through group projects, work, clubs, and other leadership and extracurricular activities. I will also continue to use these skills throughout my career after college since in the medical field, I will always be working and collaborating with other people. In my collegiate career, I will continue to use the leadership skills I have developed, like how to be an adaptive leader and change my leadership style depending on the situation, as well as making sure everyone is involved and everyone’s voice is heard. I will do this by being a leader within my classes and having study groups, being a leader in my extracurricular activities, and being a leader through work. I will also continue to use these leadership skills throughout my life and future career in the medical field. Being a physician in the future, I will work as part of a team that will require both, good teamwork and leadership skills. DSWS has really helped me develop these skills, as well as many others, since I entered college.

Freshman year was about finding where I belong. I tried many things and found what I really liked and where I wanted to make a difference. I started the school year moving in a few days early as part of the Dunn Sport and Wellness Scholars program. I only knew a few people at The Ohio State University so this was a big change in my life. I quickly met new friends within my scholars program, my classes, and extracurricular activities. I first joined club gymnastics and enjoyed meeting people that have an interest in gymnastics like me. Unfortunately, my schedule and classes got in the way of gymnastics and I wasn’t able attend as many practices as I would have liked. One of my most memorable experiences from my first few weeks of being at OSU was when I tried out for and made the rowing team as a coxswain. At first I was super excited to be a part of this team. It was really great to be in a sport like this when I never really thought I would be. After about a month, I realized that I did not enjoy being a coxswain so I stopped rowing once I realized that it was not right for me.

Throughout freshman year, especially the first few weeks, I made many changes. I realized how different college classes are than high school. I had to learn how to really study for my classes. I had to learn how to use metacognition in my classes such as how to use better strategies for learning and higher level thinking which made me a better student overall. I know I want to be a pediatric doctor so I had decided on a pre-med track, but didn’t know the major I wanted have to get there. I changed my major from Health Sciences, to Biology, to Health Promotion, Nutrition, and Exercise Science. I added minors in Psychology and Integrative Approaches to Health and Wellness. At the start of second semester, I started two jobs, a Learn To Swim Instructor and an Adapted Recreational Sports Instructor (teaching sports to people with developmental disabilities). I joined the Leadership, Education, and Development Series (L.E.A.D.S.) program. I applied for and got accepted into the Leadership Council for Dunn Sport and Wellness Scholars program for my second year at OSU. All of these have really changed who I am as a leader. While it took many changes, I found my place at OSU and I found my passion. I found the major and minors to support my interest and passion of health and wellness. I found extracurricular activities and two jobs that I really enjoy and are all stepping stones to my future goal of being a pediatric doctor.