For my third event, I went to a go Buckeye Day panel for incoming freshmen to give them a little glimpse of what IA, and OSU, is like. It happened this past Friday, April 5th. It was nice to reflect on the best things that IA has provided me, and the framework and connections it continues to provide. I think the best thing a freshman can do is join a scholars program. It gives you a foundation of people that you have to consistently be around, which is obviously way to forge friendships. It also provided me with a ton of educational opportunities, and forced me to leave my comfort zone time and time again. As I reflect on all the IA events I’ve gone to these past two years,  I can’t help but laugh about all the random things I am rudimentarily educated on. From economic crises in Japan, meeting government officials, voluntourism, history of Arab culture, and so, so much more. It also brought me so many friends by way of IA breakfasts, long community meetings, and forced proximity. It was hard for me to describe in just a few sentences all that IA has to offer, and all the things OSU has given me. How can you tell an incoming freshman that you will have your highest highs, your lowest lows, have every aspect about you be tested and built back up? How do you say that you’ll grow more as a person in your first semester than you have in all 4 years of high school? There’s no way to quantify how many challenges they’ll face, how many long nights they’ll cry through papers and projects and exams, and how many days they wish they were back home. There’s also no way to quantify how many Sunday mornings they’ll spend laughing with their neighbors about their embarrassing nights, or impromptu K-comm dates they’ll have with their friends, and how proud of themselves they’ll feel after not failing their exams. There’s something so special about having a community, like IA, right off the bat. It truly sets you up for success in every facet of college life. It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you are studying, or what your interests are – there is a place for you in IA. Somebody knows someone that can help you get to where you want to be, or help you figure out what that is.  This event was very bittersweet for me. It feels like yesterday that it was my first day at OSU, meeting my roommate for the first time, and going to Supergames for a day of team bonding. This post signifies an end of an era for me, where I am turning into a college upperclassman. It feels like this day would never come, and I am definitely being too sentimental, but IA has meant everything to me. I’m happy for the next class of freshman, which actually includes my sister, to experience the community that is International Affairs Scholars.

Yesterday, Tuesday, February 12th, I attended an event hosted by Allison Spicer to make valentines for children at Nationwide Childrens Hospital. This was a really fun event that was originally intended for my floor, floor 10 which is why my RA, Allison was responsible for it. It was nice to be able to attend an event with both my peers in IA and also my floor mates. I liked that this event combined both service aspects and social aspects, as making valentines for the children was time consuming but also really fun with all the people around.

One part of the event that was really fun was the aspect of trying to make the prettiest valentine. The people around me and I were trying to refine our handwriting to have the prettiest valentine, and we were trying all different types of cursive and print to achieve our goal. There is something about refining a skill that comes so naturally that is really challenging. We think of our handwriting as stagnant – as soon as you know learn how to write, it doesn’t change much, other than hopefully getting neater. Handwriting, though, is such an integral part of life. It is inherently personal, and was once thought to be unique to each person. Although the idea of handwriting science is outdated, it still goes to show that handwriting can be very telling about the person. Handwriting is also important in a professional sense. If you go to an interview and have to leave your name and contact, it would be very embarrassing to have illegible handwriting – and may even disqualify you. If you have above average handwriting, it might be one little thing that will set you apart from everyone else, and make you just a little bit more memorable.

Apart from the penmanship and creative part of this event, it was also really heartwarming to see a bunch of people band around doing something small to make a child’s day. I still, to this day, love to make and receive valentines cards. It always puts a smile on my face to see that something took time out of their day to put a smile on my face. I felt equally as happy knowing I was taking an hour out of my time to make cards for children that are going through really difficult times. As IA scholars, I think it’s really important that I feel like a well-rounded student. Developing this habit of take a little bit of time to address people that may be struggling is important and something I hope I take with me for the rest of my life. Service can sometimes be daunting as a large time commitment, and everyone is busy, but events like this prove that it takes very little effort to be a little bit of a better person. In any workplace, any professional environment, and pretty much any setting, there will be room to uplift those around you. I think it’s important that IA hosts events that teach us the value of this skill.

The event I attended was the Research panel, called “So you think you can do research”. It was hosted in Smith Steeb on January 28th. This panel relates to International Affairs in that it doesn’t – IA has a very diverse community in terms of majors and therefore needed more events that catered to people from a variety of educational backgrounds. I enjoyed that this event was not specifically international affairs related, but related to the people in international affairs scholars. I attended this event because I have been interested in research, and I am starting to get involved with one of my professor’s work, so I wanted to hear advice from people that are going through it. I gained a lot from this event. Specifically, I came to understand what different kinds of research exist at OSU, and especially how many different fields research can occur in. I didn’t know that you could do research in german staging and what that has to do with far right politics. I also learned that being a part of a research team could be a step to conducting your own research, even as an undergrad. Academically, this panel gave me the push I need to email my instructor again to remind them of a research opportunity they had offered me. It also taught me to be persistent, that many professors and doctoral students are busy and often need reminded of conversations that we’ve had in class. Professionally, I believe I may want to pursue academia or research later in my educational career and this, again, gave me the push I needed to pursue the research I am interested in. Personally, it motivated me to hear all of my peers that are super involved in research and things that will further them in their education and career. I want to sound that accomplished to other people too. It proved to me that I could do as much as those people are doing. This event doesn’t particularly relate to my coursework, except for addressing that there are many research opportunities in all fields – not just STEM. My education classes have been pretty clear about the fact that there are research opportunities for education majors, especially in the field of special education – which is constantly evolving and changing. The research I may be pursuing is a project with one of my special education instructors, as she is getting her doctorate in special education. I am not quite sure what specifically her research is in, but I am excited to get more involved in educational issues – and therefore become a more informed teacher. A few questions I had for the panelists were how they heard of the research they were involved in, what did they say to the PI’s in their initial email, what kind of training did they have to go through, and if they enjoyed the research they were doing. As I was writing this, I got an email from my instructor asking me to help her with her dissertation this fall – and she also connected me with a current education researcher conducting research this spring.

I attended the Breathe Hope service event in the Union on Thursday, November 15th. Breathe Hope is a club that raises money and gains support for people with cystic fibrosis, an incurable lung disease. They have a lot of events for people in the club throughout the semester, and also a lot of service events helping people with cystic fibrosis that are in the hospital. I know someone who has died from complications stemming from cystic fibrosis, so it made me productive to do something that helps people affected by the disease. In this case, we cut and tied blankets for patients in the hospital who have CF. It brought me a little comfort to know that the blankets I was making could bring someone who is suffering a little bit of comfort. It helped me realize that I want to incorporate service in any field I go into, and throughout every stage in my life. I also want to make service events like this more prevalent throughout my academic career, because it gave me a nice break from my weekly routine and was still productive. I’ve never done a service event that I didn’t directly help someone in need, and this it was refreshing to just be a nameless, faceless supporter. I have learned about genetic diseases before in some of my course work, but never specifically CF, so it was interesting to learn a little bit more about a disease that affects many young people. This topic relates to International Affairs because it’s a disease that affects people worldwide – not just in our own community. Although the blankets we made are for people in our community, the disease does not stay within Columbus city limits. The club also holds events that help people with CF across the nation, so it does not just target one demographic. Attending this event makes me wonder how many other clubs on campus there are that target a specific disease, and I wonder if they are all as popular as this one. It seems like this club has many members, but I think this is because CF affects a lot of people. I hope that the club has more events like this in the future, and I was thinking I should probably attend some more informative ones to better my understand of CF and how it manifests itself in people’s bodies. I think it’s especially interesting that CF is incurable, and is only made bearable by regular breathing treatments. I also was wondering if people in the club that I met have CF, and how their lives are affecting by having it along with being a University student. I would guess that it would depend on the severity of the disease, but having to walk all across campus seems like a daunting task with a lung disease. I also wonder if students with CF get accommodations. These are all questions I would ask the speaker had there been more time to talk, and if we weren’t just all making blankets.

The event I attended was the Undergraduate Research Festival. I visited multiple speakers and poster board, but the one that stuck out to me was a project about DNA mapping. I attended this on November 1, at 11:30. It was held in the Ohio Union, and had a few different facets to it. One part was the posterboard presentation, where participants just simply held an expo and presented their research to those who attended. Another part was the Oral presentations, which was a 10 minute presentation about their research project in front of an audience. The third aspect of the festival was the 3- minute thesis competition, in which participants created a slide and presented their research in 3 minutes or less – in lay terms only. There are then winners of that competition. The part I attended was the poster presentations. In the room. there were a considerable amount of presentations from a large variety of disciplines. This varied from dance, to education, to STEM. What surprised me was STEM research was not the clear majority, which I think is a common misconception. Most people believe that the majority of research is done in Science and the like, and that it is all laboratory based. Although this is true for a lot of the posters I encountered, it is definitely not true for all of them. There were education, psychological, and a variety of human and nonhuman based research. This relates to the topic of International Affairs because the projects were interdisciplinary and often related to life on a global level. Although I didn’t specifically see any projects that took place overseas, I’m sure they exist. Many of the projects I did see have global implications to their conclusions, and don’t just affect people in their immediate vicinity. From this event, I gained a lot of knowledge. Personally, I learned that research is pretty specific and that these students didn’t just have a general idea that they sought information about, they had a very specific hypothesis and a very specific way to research it. Professionally and academically, I learned that I would never want to do laboratory research, as it is incredibly tedious and although interesting information, pretty boring outcomes (to me). I think it would be a lot more fun to do field research, but would probably only participate if it fell on my lap, and probably wouldn’t seek it out. It seems like too big a time commitment. To be honest, I didn’t really learn much because of the IA community event where the research people came and spoke to us about research. The only thing I really learned was how crazy some people are for researching such tedious things.

I don’t have many questions about the event. The research the most stood out to me was a posterboard about genome and DNA mapping in amphibians that are almost identical, but this research proves they are not genetically identical, and that although they share many physical attributes, they differ, just slightly, in how they react to specific medications. This has pretty cool human implications, as it can affect cancer research in explaining how different people react to different medications.

I attended the Education Abroad Expo, that was from 2:00-6:00 in the Archie Griffin ballroom in the Ohio Union. I went around 3 o’clock. This topic relates to International Affairs because it showcased many of the study abroad opportunities that Ohio State has, within many disciplines and areas of study. There are many options to study abroad at OSU, and students can go to nearly any country they would want, and do everything from teach English to research penguins in Antarctica. To be honest, I don’t think I gathered much information from this event. It was pretty hectic, and was fairly crowded which made it hard to navigate and network with people that knew about programs I may be interested in. I also don’t think it was representative of just how many programs OSU had, and I thought the expo was dominated by a few departments rather than everything. So academically, it taught me that I do want to go abroad but didn’t find any specific programs that would work for me and my academic schedule. Personally, I now understand a lot of programs that I do not want to do, that I thought I might be interested in previously. So, it has helped me rule out some of the options I was considering, and also taught me that if I am truly interested in studying abroad, I need to meet with an advisor or someone like that for a more focused, one on one approach. If I were to go again, I would probably invest a little more energy into it and therefore talk to more people and to more departments I was interested in, even if it’s not my area of study. It was a little too intimidating to talk to departments that I am not taking classes in, so I didn’t talk to as many people as I probably should have. Therefore, I have a lot of questions to ask my advisor when I meet with her. If I could design my ideal study abroad experience, it would be a 4 week May-mester in which I travel to a developing country to teach English to children. Preferably somewhere in the Middle East, where I have somewhat of a cultural background. It would be interesting because I would inevitably pick up some Arabic, and also teach, which I am interested in pursuing professionally. I would have an advisor there that could guide me in my lessons and make sure I was teaching efficiently and effectively – as English is a skill that many people in the Middle East could benefit from. This would develop my skills in teaching that I could use once I have my own classroom, improve my rusty Arabic, and also put me outside my comfort zone. It would also be rewarding to return to the place of my heritage, to give back/teach skills. My goals as a study abroad student are to push myself outside my comfort zone, learn a lot of new things, learn how to adapt, and also find a sense of reward in whatever I am doing. Although I am tentatively considering a semester abroad, realistically, I more likely see myself doing a summer program for a month or so.

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