Sophomore Year Semester 1 Artifact

My artifact for this semester is a new experience I have had here at Ohio State.

This year I decided to branch out by joining Off the Lake Productions at Ohio State. I found out about OTL through several Mounties who are current and former members of the organization. In just the first two months of being in the stage crew for our upcoming musical I have made many new friends and had the opportunity to spend time with different kinds of people than I’m used to in my engineering classes. Joining this student organization has been a really enriching experience for me as a student, giving me a new community to be a part of.

Being a part of such an active organization has forced me to learn some new lessons in balancing school work and social life. In the past I have often put my school work ahead of my social life. As a result I have gotten very good grades my first three semesters of college but not as much social interaction as is probably healthy. An example of this lesson is in the past set building dinners the crew has after each build. Our set builds get done at 10 pm and often a big group goes to Sloopy’s afterwards. At first I never went to these dinners and instead returned to my dorm to do school work or go to bed. Eventually I found that the fun I had getting to spend time with my friends for an hour or two each week at Sloopy’s out weighed the consequences of starting my homework or getting to bed a bit later.  In fact just two weeks ago I went out with the crew instead of reviewing for a midterm I had the next morning and I ended up getting a 99  on the midterm and I bet I wouldn’t have done as well if I hadn’t gotten to relax and spend time with friends that night.

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