Asking For Help

If there is anything that I have learned in these past few weeks of being on campus, its that OSU Engineering and high school are on two different universes. The overall structure of your day, and classes is different in so many little ways that I never expected. While the classes never seemed to end in high school, the days never seem to end in college. I always have a long list of items that I should or could be doing at practically every moment of the day. Finding a rhythm and sticking to that seems to be one of the hardest transitions for me here at OSU. Distractions are everywhere and while there is a lot of time that is not scheduled for a specific tasks, there is a seemingly never ending laundry list that needs to constantly be taken care of. For me, a lot of this is classwork and dedicating time for studying. I have had a hard time with setting aside specific time and being motivated to study. I am a very social person, and because of that am easily distracted from my work by simply talking. However, I also do really well with smaller study groups and other group work environments. This makes it deciding where and how to study a dilemma.

To help me tackle some of these issues, I decided to see an academic coach at the Dennis Learning Center in the Younkin Success Center. Peiliang, a second year, talked to me about my classes, study habits, and stress management. He listened to me, and would suggest some strategies for me to use. The biggest idea he focused on was determining what is important in your day and trying to schedule around it. He suggested that I rank tasks based on urgency and importance, and to complete tasks in a certain order based upon how I rank each task in each category. These ideas seem pretty helpful and so far I have been successful in implementing the strategies in my studying. In addition, he stressed the importance of going to office hours and seeking help even if you feel that you have a good grasp on the subject. For example, learning how my instructors would think and solve specific question could be beneficial to gain a diverse understanding of the topics. This made a lot of sense to me, so I decided to go to my physic’s professors office hours, and ask him if the way that I approached some of the more complex problems was the way he would recommend. He was able to explain other ideas and shortcuts that would help me answer the problem. In addition, I listened to how he explained some questions to other students, and it helped me to know what topics I understood well, and which ones I didn’t understand in full. Overall, some of the tips that Peiliang suggested to me seem to be very beneficial and tailored to who I am as a student. I feel more confident in taking on the immense class load that I have this semester, and am excited about the future.

Finding the ACM-W

During the Ohio State Involvement Fair, I quickly realized the sheer number of student organizations and became overwhelmed by all of my options. However, at the same time, none of the organizations seem to be exactly what I was looking for. I knew that the organizations that I was interested in joining revolved around service and/or Computer Science/STEM, so I decided to go to many different organization meetings the first few weeks of being at OSU. The issue became that the meeting times were all around the same time, so I had to make decisions and choose which organizations were really important to me. I went to many computer science clubs, and I liked a few of them, but I was never really sold on any one of them. I always felt that the rooms were full of people trying to flex their skills and boost their ego, more than trying to help and be a mentor to underclassmen. To me, it was a toxic environment that I was not incredibly interested in being a part of. But luckily, I was convinced into going to an ACM-W meeting. I had seen the posters and have had people talk to me about the group, but I did not initially think the club would even accept me. This is because ACM-W stands for the Association of Computing Machinery – Women’s Chapter, so as a man, I did not think that I would fit in and did not think I was even able to go to a women’s club. Nevertheless, some influential people convinced me to go, and it has been one of the best decisions I have made here at OSU. The group was very accepting of men joining their group and I realized that most of the awkwardness I was feeling was being put on by myself rather than the women in the room. In contrast to the other clubs I went to, the ACM-W was focused on helping everybody succeed and was a organization created to uplift. The people are a fantastic mix of being mentors as well as also showing technical aptitude and share a general goal of coming together to collectively achieve our goals. The goal of the ACM-W is to help women get jobs in computer science, and I never realized until now how necessary achieving this goal is. There is a clear lack of diversity in computer science that I can see not only from my classes but from the other computer science organizations that I went to. If the club was a generic club, it seemed that the entire room was full of the exact same people wearing different outfits. They had the same mindset and there was not only a lack of diversity in race and gender, but in thought and action. I have realized how devastating the lack of diversity is in tech fields, and I want to do my part to change that, even as a white man. The ACM-W is a great place for me to work on increasing diversity, by empowering women to feel that they can succeed, while also gaining experience and networking in a tech club. In the end, finding the ACM-W has incredibly surprised me by really helping me find a group that I can connect with and share a love for Computer Science with.