At the beginning of the year, I went to convocation.  At the event, everyone received a scarlet and grey tassle.  Although it isn’t the one we’ll wear at graduation, it was given to us as a reminder for why we’re here and where we want to go.

Surprisingly enough, I’ve found that it’s worked.  Whenever I haven’t done as well as I’ve liked on something, or just would feel fatigued because of all of the work that I need to get done, looking at the tassle gave me a boost of motivation to get to meet my goals.  Sometimes it seems like 4 years is way too long of a time, but I know that graduation will get here sooner than I know it.  Having a symbol of why I’m here at college has reminded me of this fact.

On March 5th, I attended a TedX conference held here at Ohio State.  The theme of the conference was “Reconstructing Reality”.  In the conference’s 3 sessions, speakers spoke on a variety of subjects that all centered around the idea that we need to challenge how we view the world around us.

Going to this conference had a great impact on me as a student and person.  Every speech I heard made me think about how I think about things.  Whether it was talking about how the tech industry is rapidly evolving, the racial tensions that still exist, or how representation in things like comic books matters to the young people reading them, all of the speakers gave good reason to reevaluate how I thought about the world.  More importantly, they also reminded me how crucial it is to understand how others perceive the world.  On a campus as diverse as this one, we need to be able to work with people who may understand things differently than we do.  Going to this conference helped me to remember this.

All audience members wore a name tag like one.

One artifact that’s very important to me is the research project I did for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.  In this project for the Scholars seminar, my group researched the second Goal, which is “Achieve Universal Primary Education”.  We focused on the Middle East and how MDG #2 has affected the region.

The first part of the project consisted of writing a paper that talked about what MDG #2 in detail, what the Middle East entails, why the Goal was needed in the region, and solutions that the UN recommended to achieve the MDG.  My responsibility in the project was to work on the fourth part of the paper.  The second part of the project was presenting our Goal to the rest of the seminar class.  In making our Prezi, we summarized our paper, and also talked about the progress of MDG #2 in the Middle, the roadblocks to it being fully achieved, and what future plans the UN has to continue this goal in the future.

This project helped me to grow more as a student.  Researching the struggle to ensure universal primary education for all children in the Middle East not only allowed me to research a global region that I have no personal experience with, but also allowed me to learn about a global issue that I haven’t had to ever worry about personally.  Learning about these global issues reminded me that as a student,  I need to always make sure I’m not just focused on my own personal bubble here at OSU, but that I remain aware of others in the global community.

This Prezi was what we used to summarize our paper, as well as show how much progress has been made in achieving MDG 2 in the Middle East.