G.O.A.L.S.

My first-year mentee was Jackie Groeschen from Loveland, Ohio. She Is majoring in marketing and hopes to someday work for a cosmetics company in product design and marketing. Both of us are from Cincinnati and went to the same high school, Ursuline Academy, but we didn’t know each other that well before this year. We are pretty similar in the sense that we are both from the same area and have similar families, but a big difference is that I’m the oldest in my family whereas she has an older sister that currently attends Ohio State. We are also both in sororities and are really interested in community service.

 

One way that Jackie grew between the first and second semesters is that she became more involved at OSU. In the first semester interview, she said that she had difficulty navigating the club fair and was hoping to get more involved. In the second semester, she joined a sorority and found a club that she was passionate about. I also think she became more comfortable on campus. In the fall, she joked that she didn’t know where anything was, but now she seemed to understand how campus works and felt more a part of the OSU community.

 

I think I grew as a mentor because I was able to see different perspectives. I had a very different first-year experience that came with completely different struggles than this class of freshman, so understanding how their struggles were different allowed me to gain some more empathy towards their situation and pushed me to reach out more to the other first-year students that I know.

 

I was able to help my mentee because I could be a resource of different clubs and organizations that she could be a part of. I think involvement was one of the biggest struggles for Jackie in the first semester because she was incredibly involved in high school, so I could give her resources to explore organizations she might be interested in. The benefits of the mentorship program is the ability to develop your leadership skills. As a second-year student, you are the leaders of the ACES program which can be difficult to realize when it feels like you just arrived at OSU. The mentorship program allows you to develop necessary skills such as communication, management, and interpersonal skills that you may not learn in a classroom.

 

During the summer of 2019, I participated in leukemia research in the Kumar Lab in the Bone Marrow Transplant Department of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. I worked as a laboratory aid and performed experiments for several different publications relating to mixed lineage leukemia and Langerhans cell histiocytosis. Through attending weekly floor meetings, I was able to learn about cancer research happening across the department, and I really enjoyed being able to learn so much about my future field while gaining experience in my field. I hope to be able to continue my work in the Kumar Lab next summer.

One of my experiences of global awareness is when I went to the United Nations to attend the Commission on the Status of Women 62 in March of 2018. The theme of the conference was achieving gender equality and empowerment of rural women and girls. Through this conference, I had the opportunity to hear about the experiences of different women across the globe. The conference changed my entire outlook on life. I heard firsthand accounts of human trafficking, child marriages, sexual harassment, and many others. The strength and endurance these women have shown have greatly inspired me to continue to spread awareness for these issues.