[ “G.O.A.L.S.” is a place where students write about how their planned, current, and future activities may fit into the Honors & Scholars G.O.A.L.S.: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement. For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.

• Global Awareness: Students cultivate and develop their appreciation for diversity and each individual’s unique differences. For example, consider course work, study abroad, involvement in cultural organizations or activities, etc.
• Original Inquiry: Honors & Scholars students understand the research process by engaging in experiences ranging from in-class scholarly endeavors to creative inquiry projects to independent experiences with top researchers across campus and in the global community. For example, consider research, creative productions or performances, advanced course work, etc.
• Academic Enrichment: Along with aiming to take challenging coursework for my first two semesters of college, I have also chosen to pursue a minor in Education on top of my major. I wanted to challenge myself to branch out of the human development courses and learn more about education and how to teach kids, as well as getting a feel for teaching with FEEP, which will help me later when I pursue a graduate program for Occupational Therapy, as well as if I decide to go back and get a licensure for teaching.I have chosen to challenge myself in coursework and branch out beyond what is expected of me in order to show academic enrichment. 
• Leadership Development: The Mentorship program has probably been one of the most fun and rewarding part of both my ACES and my Ohio State experience. Not only did I love participating in it as a first-year last year, and getting to know my mentor Cammie, I have loved stepping into that “older and wiser” role for the first years coming into our Scholars group. I have gone through school in a global pandemic for over a year now, but I at least got about a semester of “normalcy” before we were sent home for Coronavirus. I can only imagine the freshmen this year, who had their senior years disrupted and then came into college and not having anything be typical of the Ohio State experience. My mentee is Eliza Stella, a first-year student studying Human Development and Family Science from Cincinnati, Ohio. She came in undecided, but knowing she wanted to do something with kids and adolescents, so I told her about my major (HDFS) and I think she fell in love with it. Both Eliza and I are very dedicated to service and our community, and both made headway at our high schools for creating and leading service-based clubs. We both are very committed to our respective sports, swimming for me and dance for her, and love working out. When we first met, I think we immediately hit it off; with two extroverts, every conversation between us is super fun and high energy because we are thriving off of each other’s personalities. During our second semester Explore Columbus and interview, we had great conversations and talked a lot about school and our classes (which we are trying to take some of the same for next semester). Eliza has made a lot of new friends from around the country, something she was worried about first semester because she didn’t want to exclusively stick with people from her high school. I think that by her being in a Scholars program, specifically ACES, it has really helped her meet and bond with a lot of different people that share similar passions. Throughout this year, I grew as both a mentor and a leader by learning to reach out and help her with even the smallest of things (probably even when she was tired of hearing from me, haha). Being a second-year mentor, I have learned that even just by reaching out and telling someone you are there for them it can completely make someone’s day, which is super rewarding. Communication is key in life, especially in the role of a mentor. I think for me personally, especially since I struggle with anxiety, I have a fear deep down that I am bothering people when I reach out, and I just don’t want to reach out because of fear of rejection. Reaching out to my mentee, and her reaching out to me was something that really helped keep our relationship growing and getting closer, once we realized that we weren’t bothering each other. Hence, the reason for our constant texting and talking. When I was a mentee, I think that once my mentor and I got over the hump of poor/lack of communication, that was also when our relationship got better and less awkward and obligatory. I also helped my mentee with meeting others in the ACES program, both first-years and second-years, because with the pandemic it was hard to get out and meet people. My roommate from last year, Emma Fry, and her mentee, Dayna Snow, paired up to do our first semester Explore Columbus and we all had a great time. My other best friend in ACES, Abby Williams, and her mentee, Abby Jarrold, paired up and did our second semester Explore Columbus together. By making the meetings/interviews more fun, rather than just something we HAD to do for the program, I think we got past the uncomfortableness/awkwardness. In relation to learning about campus, and the city around us, I reached out to Eliza about my favorite restaurants, coffeeshops, and places to study, so that she could share that with me and have some sense of “normal” in this far from normal world. The mentorship program option of ACES is so beneficial, but I think that this year it was even more important to make the first years feel welcome and happy at Ohio State. College is a hard transition for anyone, but having a built-in mentor/leader is something that you can’t replace. The mentorship program in ACES has been an awesome experience, and I can’t wait for my mentee to become a mentor!
• Service Engagement: During my first weekend being an official buckeye, I had the honor to work with an amazing school wide organization, called Community Commitment, a community wide day of service. My group was sent to a local YMCA where we helped to organize the storage closets for the different after school and daycare programs. Along with helping the people who owned and worked at that branch of the YMCA, we got to interact with and help local people in the community which was a really cool experience. To say that I was able to do that after a week of moving in and getting adjusted to college life is pretty cool, and something I will value for the rest of my life.