A few weeks ago, on Sunday August 26^th, I attended an International Affairs Scholars event led by the academic programming chair Sam Stelnicki on the current economic crisis in Venezuela.  The event took place in Smith-Steeb and was pretty clearly is connected to International Affairs in the sense that it encouraged myself, and other IA scholars to engage in a discussion about an important current event, or rather series of events, globally.  This event unfortunately did not have too much dialogue going on from those who attended due to the fact that many people did not have any real knowledge of the situation before the event, and did not read the articles that Sam provided beforehand, but I still got a decent amount out of it, as Sam and I are both economics majors and were able to actually have some level of expertise on the subject.  This particular event was actually very in line with my interests, as I am double majoring in Economics and International Relations & Diplomacy, with minors in Spanish and Portuguese.  I am very interested, as evidenced by my areas of study at Ohio State, in Latin American languages, cultures, and societies, as well as international politics, macroeconomics, and international economic relations.  Because of all of this, I was able to gain a lot from this particular event and discussion on the topics surrounding the hyper-inflation, corruption, and other economic factors leading to the current crisis in Venezuela.  I really enjoy the academic programming aspects of IA scholars, as it provides a good forum to engage in different experiences and discussions with my peers about topics that I, and most other IA scholars find interesting.  This particular event, and other similar events, also helps to supplement my education in the classroom by having additional contact with international topics, in a different medium or forum than I experience in my actual classes.  Sam and I are also in an economics class together this semester, so we frequently discuss economic topics, such as the topic that was the focus of this particular IA academic event, and it was a cool opportunity to be able to bring that economics expertise that we are learning in the classroom into a discussion with fellow IA scholars who are interested in the topic, but may not know as much about the actual situation or the economic phenomena that lead to large-scale macroeconomic crises such as the current one in Venezuela.  This particular forum was exceptionally well-tailored toward what I am studying, as it incorporated themes from my studies of international relations, economics, and Spanish language.  Overall it was a very good opportunity for me to gain additional academic exposure to issues related to International Affairs, and it was a good event overall.

This fall, I joined the Undergraduate Student Government at OSU where I am a Committee Representative in the Academic Affairs committee.  Through USG I have met many fantastic people and have started to already make an impact on the undergraduate experience of myself and every single other student at The Ohio State University.  This semester I have been predominantly working on a project dealing with educational resource affordability, specifically pertaining to access codes and other online learning resources.  Throughout my first semester in the Academic Affairs committee, I have already been involved in important projects that make real changes at this university, and I have also gained another community here at Ohio State that I feel that I can really call a family.  The above picture is one of me with the rest of my committee at a recent Thanksgiving potluck dinner where we ate some delicious food and sat down together at the dinner table to talk and spend time together.  I have loved my time in USG thus far and I know that I will continue to form close bonds with my fellow USG members as well as continue to fight for the undergraduate students at this university to make Ohio State the best possible place that it can be.