I have had extremely difficult classes this year. While I learned plenty academically, the most important lesson I learned was how to work with people. Both semesters, one of my classes focused solely on groupwork. While is can be quite enjoyable as the work can be split up between people, I did not have that pleasure. Specifically, the group I worked with during the first semester was tough. There was extremely little communication, uneven workloads and half-effort assignments barely turned in on time. I did not say much during this group as I was worried of being thought of as the girl who took over everything. Going into the second semester, I was worried this would happen again. After many conversations with people close to me, I realized that I needed to be the one to initiate things in order for things to get done. This really helped me in learning that sometimes people just need to be pushed a little in order for something big to be accomplished. After a few “Let’s get going on this” messages, my group reached a point where everything was completed early, with maximum effort, and equal work. Even though this seems like a small accomplishment, this has greatly impacted me.

I am very comfortable in my little bubble and the idea of going out and starting up a conversation was terrifying. While working with my group, I have been able to get out of my comfort zone and am more confident in my abilities to be a successful member of a team. I have been able to take this and relay it into my everyday life. I have always been very shy and I wanted college to be my chance to grow and finally shove myself out of my comfort zone and it has. I learned that I am never going to be able to talk to people unless I put myself out there and am not afraid to say something. With everyday passing, I can feel myself getting more comfortable in my shoes and able to strike up conversations with people I normally would not. I am absolutely loving how, even through COVID, I am able to interact with people who teach me something every day, whether it be about life or myself.

The people who have helped me the most throughout this year is my suitemates. They have been instrumental in me leaving my comfort zone and putting myself out there. I can say, without a doubt, that my favorite memories from this year, are with them. While I cannot pinpoint a specific memory, they all revolve around midnight activities, ranging from dancing to loud music to randomly deciding to walk to buckeye donuts. Our evenings are always filled with happiness and laughter and I do not think I would have had a good year without that.

We have become so close that we planned on living together next year; however, due to the lottery, we could not get a suite. While we were extremely disappointed, we decided on living as neighbors in order for us to stay together. I am looking forward to living close to each other and being able to continue the late-night adventures. Another exciting part of next year is having a car on campus. While staying on campus is great, there is a limited amount of activities we can do, having a car will allow us to drive around Columbus, explore the city, and continue those late-night adventures. I am extremely happy to have completed my first year at Ohio State and I cannot wait to see what the future brings.

My classes this semester are pretty difficult, therefore, making it really difficult to enjoy going to class. In my english class, we are each doing presentations of different, real-world topics that effect many people’s lives. During each presentation, I am learning new ideas and interesting ways to try to create a positive effect on today’s negative problems. There is always something that someone can do to try to make the world a better place. As we try to create a better place for our children and our children’s children, I learned that we can talk about making change as much as we want; however, the only way to actually make a change is by physically going out and working towards making the world a better place. It is just as important, if not more to be working behind the scenes in order to actually accomplish something. Working with a group is extremely similar, I learned that in order to get anything done, I cannot be afraid to be the one who gets the projects going, the meetings decided and starts conversations. It is always difficult for me to step out of my comfort zone because it is so nice and warm. This semester, I have learned how to put myself out there and be more confident in the things that I say or do. I was always really excited to go to college because I wanted to be pushed out and forced to do things I normally would not and I am really happy that it finally has. At the beginning of the year, it was extremely difficult due to COVID-19, but I have been able to learn how to communicate with others even during this time. Each conversation I have I can feel myself and my ideas growing. I am becoming a person that I really like and I hope that I continue to grow into the best person I can possibly be.

My second semester of college has already been much different than my first semester. Last semester I was mostly online; however, this semester, I have quite a few in-person classes which is really nice. This forces me to go outside and spend time in the fresh, cold air. I am really enjoying the majority of my classes this semester. I have to take an english class and the theme of the class is nationalism and national identity. When I walked into the class, I had the idea that nationalism was a bad thing and national identity was pretty similar to nationalism. I was surprised to learn that there are actually a lot of good aspects to nationalism, as long as we try to mitigate the bad parts, and that while there are a few similar aspects to the two, they are actually pretty different.

The first two weeks of the semester we completely online and I learned that I am not very good at learning online at home. Once I came back to Morrill, I figured out that I cannot learn when I am at home all by myself all day. I really struggled while at home because I think that being surrounded by no one makes it really difficult for me to focus because I have no one to talk to all day. While at Morrill, I live with six other girls and I have the ability to talk to them whenever I walk out of my room. It gives me the ability to let my brain relax and regroup in-between classes and during the hours of homework and studying.

During the break, I was offered a position into the Chemical Engineering major. Due to my academic success last semester, I no longer have to apply into the chemical engineering major, it was offered to me and I gladly accepted it. I was so excited when I received the email because I worked so hard last semester and it paid off. Because of this, I learned that even if I am really struggling, as long as I keep pushing, it will pay off and I will achieve anything I want to achieve.

Going to Ohio State has definitely changed and impacted my life in multiple ways. Due to COVID-19 I can firmly say that my experience as Ohio State is much different than the freshman classes that came before us. We have had to adapt to a whole new system where everything is online. Having online schooling has not been very easy for many people, including me, I found myself lacking in motivation and having to figure out new ways to get myself to actually do work. I have had to learn how to balance my life so that I study and get good grades, am able to meeting people and socialize, and get a few hours of sleep in every night. It took a while to finally be able to do all three; however, once I adapted to not being able to do everything, I instantly felt better about being able to succeed as a student. I do not think that I have fully adapted to online schooling yet but since we seem to be doing this until who knows when, I am going to keep pushing and figure out how to succeed throughout these tough times.

Overall, my time at Ohio State has been amazing. I love everything about it, the campus, the people, the environment and a few classes. I really like the fact that I truly have independence and freedom; however, with that freedom comes a lot of responsibility and I think I have been able to responsibly utilize my freedom. When I first arrived, I had to remember that it was not one giant party, I actually had a goal and I had things that I needed to accomplish. While it felt, at times, that I do not have enough time to get anything done, I have found that going to work out or simply talking to my suitemates has been able to give me the push I needed to accomplish what I need. While I found it challenging, it was something that I really enjoyed having to learn about.

I did not think that I would miss home as much as I did during my first semester. I am lucky, in that, my parents live an hour and forty-five minutes away from campus because there have been a few occasions when I randomly needed to go home. As excited as I am that I have my freedom, sometimes when I am having a rough day or week, I just need a hug from my mom or to have my dad talk some sense into me. They are the people who know me the best and they know how to calm me down when I am having a freak out and I missed how easy it was, when living at home, to go and talk to them.

At the beginning of the year, I was really struggling in a couple of my classes. I kept getting bad grade after bad grade and I was really worried that I was not going to do well overall. I ended up having trouble sleeping and focusing because of my worry. But, like I said before, I had my parents who I called on multiple occasions and they helped me keep pushing and create motivation for myself so that I would eventually succeed. Because of this, I actually did not do as terribly in my classes as I thought I would. I think that I expected college to be similar to high school academically; however, within the first couple of weeks, I quickly learned that college is much more difficult. Nevertheless, I kept pushing and I would definitely consider that an achievement.

For spring semester, I would like to get out of my comfort zone much more. I have always been pretty shy and I was really looking forward to college because I could be anyone I wanted to be when I got here. Then COVID happened and I was not able to go out, meet new people, and push myself out of my comfort zone. Although next semester might not be much different, I would like to continue the progress I have made and keep pushing myself and keep growing as a person.

I chose to interview Kayla Flick, a current junior studying Chemical engineering. She was originally a biology major on the pre-med track and then decided that graduate school was not for her so she switched to engineering. She chose chemical engineering because there is a lot of opportunity with having an engineering degree. You can go to graduate school or get a good job in different industries with simply a bachelors degree.

She just graduated ENR last year and was very adamant about her love for the program. When asked about her time in ENR, she immediately said her favorite memory was the camping trip and hocking hills. She explained that it was a really helpful bonding experience that brought all of the ENR scholars together. Everyone was from a different part of the world which resulted in trying new things and diversifying your interests. It really opened up her mind to different parts of the world. She explained how upset she was that we never got to experience these trips to due COVID-19 because she loved them so much. She still communicates regularly with many of her fellow ENR students. I am hoping that next year, we will be able to experience these trips and form these unbreakable bonds with one another because having those relationships will provide a strong safety net. I want to be able to take the skills learned by working together, bonding, and collaborating into the workforce and help me become a better employee.

When asking her about her classes, different organizations, and advice in the professional world, she gave very insightful advice. The general classes are made to be extremely difficult but they set you up really well to understand future classes. So it is really important to understand the concepts so they help give you a boost in the future; however, after a little bit of time working, the jobs become less and less technical. Not only are knowing the fundamental concepts important, but also becoming involved in the community and building connections are very helpful for finding jobs and sharpening your skills. When going into the professional world, having some previous experience is extremely helpful. Kayla is currently on a co-op with a manufacturing firm and she believes that it is worthwhile co-oping, even if it pushes back your graduation, because until your are actually in the field, you have no idea which field you actually want to go into. Co-oping taught Kayla that as a women in engineering, you will encounter men who ignore you and do not work as hard as you but her advice was to be prepared to stand your ground, show how smart you are while being humble, and value other people’s opinions and advice. She said to be prepared for your opinion to be overwritten and/or invalidated but to not let that stop you. Work hard, do your projects to the best of your ability and in doing so, good mangers will see how qualified you are. Do not be afraid to make yourself looks good by showing how you did your job well and why it is beneficial. Because I want to experience working in the engineering field before actually becoming one, I will co-op and I will use the advice Kayla gave me to show that I am qualified to be an engineer. In doing so, it will, hopefully, provide a future job for me.

Wow! The end of my first semester at OSU is rearing its ugly head. Halloween is a couple days away and we are being sent home in less than a month. But being here, on my own, has taught me that I need to force myself to be motivated in order to get work done. It is that time of year, for me, where I have zero motivation to get anything done. All I want to do is sleep all day, not attend classes, and not do homework. It has been a bit of a struggle. I have to force myself out of bed for my early morning classes and I usually end up finding ways to procrastinate on all of my assignments because I just do not feel like doing them. I think I am in desperate need for the holidays to come around. But regardless, I go to my classes and manage to get all of my assignments in on time.

As a way to destress from my lack of motivation, one of my suitemates and I have come up with a plan to workout daily. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we do cardio and abs. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we lift. Now, when we initially started this, I fully expected it to end in a week; however, it’s been a couple of weeks and we are still working out daily. I find this to be an accomplishment because we get lazy and we knew that we would stop. So, we made a deal that even if one of us are tired and do not feel like going, the other would drag them along so they get their workout in. This has been very efficient because when one does not want to work out, the other does so we balance each other out.

Last week, during our ENR lecture, we played a jeopardy game where we learned many interesting facts. One of the questions was how to survive an elevator falling and I had thought the answer was to jump when it reached the bottom; however, it turns out the way to survive that is by lying flat on your back. We also learned how to survive a blizzard if you are stranded in your car, how to help someone when they have fallen and their bone is now outside of their body, how to identify hypothermia, and how to help someone if they cannot breathe. I have no clue if I will ever need to use these skills, but now that I know them, if such a crisis ever arises, I will know what do to.

I think a very important skill to have is to know how to react when there is a crisis. Since the beginning of the school year, there have been a few occasions when we have woken up to the smell of gas in our building. We have had to evacuate a couple of times. Due to this, I have learned that I am pretty good in a crisis. I keep a calm head and I quickly and efficiently grabbed all the essentials. After figuring this out about myself, I thought about my past and how in every crisis situation, I have always reacted well. For some reason, my head clears and I know exactly what to do to get everyone out safe.