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Back Handspring Stem final project

Attached above is the video of my final project where I learned to do a back handspring.  A struggle I had was trying to find someone that knew how to spot for a back handspring.  Its ironic but the quarantine actually helped my project because my dad was an OSU cheerleader who learned how to do all of the tricks when he got to college and was able to show me how to learn it and was able to spot me.

I did not have much trouble with motivation because I really wanted to learn how to do this, and I did not have trouble with time management as well because it was only a 10 hour project and there was plenty to learn.  For the longer Capstone Project next year, I will have to work on time management because the project will be much more in depth and take longer.

For my Spring Semester Project, I would like to learn how to do a back handspring.  I have always been able to do a cartwheel but I really would like to take it to the next level and expand my skills.  Sports and physical activity have always been a huge part of my life and something I enjoy very much.  I plan to use youtube videos to try and learn this skill.  To do this, I first need to work on the flexibility of my core and back, and then learn and master the steps of a back handspring.

I attended a meeting for the Society of Women Engineers, which is an on campus organization that focuses on the inclusion of women in the engineering field.  The engineering field is historically dominated by white males, and this needs to change.  It is important that people with different backgrounds and points of view are brought into the field because more diversity creates better and more different ideas which can help growth and development of new products and better solutions to our everyday problems.

I was definitely excited to go to this event because I was excited to meet more women in engineering, and because it was the Chop Shop social, where they gave us free Chop Shop burgers!  The event was very fun.  We arrived right at 7 so we sat at the last empty table with another girl, and when we got our burgers another girl joined us.  This girl just happened to be the president of the Society of Women Engineers.  We had very interesting talks at our table about a variety of topics and she told us all about what we should expect in the future from our classes and just the experience and workload of being an engineer.  She told us about internships and research and how they can help your resumes, but also how they can help you find your real path.

Diversity is really important in every aspect of your life.  You can learn so much from people from different backgrounds as you and coming from an all white suburb of Cleveland I have found the diversity of Ohio State to be exciting.  I have a girl in my class that came from a high school with a graduating class of 14.  I have a guy in my differential equations class (also an engineer) that is from Switzerland via Washington state.   Diversity and Inclusion impacts me daily because I can talk to these people and learn so much about the world just by listening to them talk and seeing how their processes and ways of thinking are just so different than mine, and I can use this to expand my way of thinking.  At the SWE event, it caused me to see how much of an impact minority groups can have when they band together.  The girls in this organization are very close with each other, each person having a big and a little, like a family.  This can be useful later in life when we carry on these friendships and connections and use them in the professional field to help get more woman representation in the manager and CEO jobs at engineering firms and in large companies.

While this is just one example of diversity on campus, there are many more.  I have seen many signs in my dorms for different events, like Tacos and Torah or Women in Technical Careers Sorority.  I do think the university does a good job of offering many diversity opportunities, but they might have more success if they were better advertised rather than just posters on the wall if possible.

When choosing the seminar that I wanted to attend, I had a few problems because a lot of the seminars conflicted with my class schedule.  I decided to go with a physics based seminar because I liked physics when I took it in high school so I chose the seminar, “Quantum Information Seminar Series and Optical Science Seminar – Quantum Weirdness and Quantum Technology” on Friday October 18th at 3pm.  I was a little nervous going into the room because I had never been to one of these campus seminars and I didn’t know if it was going to be a large seminar or an intimate talk.  The talk was in the Physics Research Building, which I have never been in before, so I was nervous I would get lost and be late.  Also, I was going by myself so I was a little apprehensive that all of the other people in the seminar would be older.  As it turns out, I was not the only undergraduate student there.  In fact, there were two other students that are in my STEM Scholars survey class.  This made me feel much more comfortable there and ready to listen to the lecture.  There was a wide range of people in this seminar from undergraduates like me, to graduate students, to professors and others professionals working in the field and just people interested in learning something new.

The speaker started his lecture and was super amicable and a great speaker.  He made an analogy that was easy to understand and made jokes throughout the seminar that kept the environment light-hearted and the talk interesting.  However, there became a problem when he tried to connect the analogy back to the real topic.  It was at that moment that I realized that I had no idea what the word Quantum meant or what quantum weirdness is or what quantum technology does.  What he described sounded very interesting and a very powerful piece of technology, but the essence of the talk went straight over my head because I did not know what the basis of the ideas meant.  I did learn that there are some powerful computers that Google has that does powerful things, and also, the unfortunate thing is, that research the magnitude that Google is able to do with their vast resources is not quite as possible at the University level because there is just not enough money for projects of that size.

I think it was beneficial for me to go to a seminar like this even though a lot of it I did not understand.  It opened me up to the world of academia after the undergraduate or even graduate level.  I was able to be peers with some very smart people in this room and this experience demonstrated that if you are willing, there is always something out there for you to learn and I hope to remember that after I graduate college and go out into the world to start my life.

This week I decided to take a trip down to the Office of International Affairs to learn about the Study Abroad Programs.  I have always been interested in the world around me and it is definitely one of my goals to study abroad during college.  I do have a few problems though, because there are so many places I want to go and things all around the world I want to experience.  Additionally, I had many questions about the Study Abroad experience, how to fit it into my schedule as an engineer, and how to find the resources like scholarships and support to make this experience a reality.

I walked into the office and the woman I talked to was very helpful.  I learned many important things about how to get started.  She showed me the online website which has even more helpful resources about getting started and carrying it out.  First, there are Getting Started sessions every Tuesday and Wednesday that talk about financing the trips, the application process, and finding the right program.  There are more types of programs than I actually realized.  The Office of International Affairs offers a variety of programs to meet the individual goals of many students.  They have the normal study abroad programs that most people would think of, but also faculty-led programs where students go with a group to visit a certain place or landmark and learn about a specific subjects.  Also, there are service learning programs, which I had actually heard about before from my engineering professor Dr. Ratcliff, who had lead a program last semester.  I had gone to his office hours near the beginning of the semester to learn about this type of program and it seems very interesting.  The students enroll in a service learning class one semester where they learn about a problem in a foreign country that needs help.  Throughout the semester, the students brainstorm and plan a solution, which they implement after the end of the semester when they actually go to that country.

All of these program seem like great experiences, and I hope to be able to find the time and resources to experience it.  I definitely think studying abroad is an important part of the college experience and a part of a well-rounded college education.  It was definitely encouraging how the information about the scholarships is so readily available.  I was shown the website for study abroad which had two whole tabs about funding and scholarships.  The first tab showed that FAFSA money could be transferred over and used during study abroad, and the second tab showed a very long list of scholarships, which hopefully would make it possible for everyone.  Additionally, there is a program called STEP, which includes a grant that could go towards housing for an internship, funding for research, or for study abroad.

The people in the office were all very nice and welcoming and they do work very hard so that all students have access to a program they would be interested in.  I also went to the Study Abroad Expo that was put on by the Office of International Affairs, which included booths for all of the different types of programs, some of which were based on majors, while others were based on cultural experiences.  I am planning to use all of the information from these two Office of International Affairs resources to find the best program for me, and hopefully at the best price possible.

A week ago, I went to a meeting for a student organization on campus called OCF.  This stands for Orthodox Christian Fellowship and is a meeting for fellow Orthodox Christians to get together and discuss their faith and how it affects them as college students.  I found this organization in two ways.  I am a part of another organization, Sigma Epsilon Phi, which is a Sorority/Fraternity for Greek Orthodox Christians.  Sigma focuses more on the social and outreach portion, while OCF focuses on the faith itself.  Because both of them are similar, they are sister organizations and each one recruits for the other.  Also, my brother is on the executive board for OCF and really wanted me to come to a meeting.  I came by myself, but it alright because my brother was there of course and I had also met many people already at a Sigma meeting.

I definitely think there are many benefits to being in a student organization.  First of all, my circle of friends expanded very fast and it made me feel more at home to know that there were people all over campus that I could call if I needed help or if I wanted to talk about the faith or even if I needed a ride to church.  Secondly, with a campus as big as OSU, I was bound to find some people in the organizations that have similar interests as me.  For example, one of the girls in OCF actually used to be a part of the STEM Scholars program and it was cool to talk to her about what I can expect over the next two years.  Finally, when you get involved with any organization, the meetings or events provide a nice break in the week to relax and enjoy good company.  It is good every once in a while to take a break from studying and take a load off.  On the other hand, I also have to learn time management skills to be able to get all of my work done on time and still be able to enjoy some free time at the meetings.  For example, the meetings are on Tuesdays at 7-8pm, but I have my Biology lab from 4:30-7:15 and then Boxing Club starts at 8 and goes until 10pm.  Because of this busy schedule, I know that during the day, I can take few breaks and have to get all of my work done before going to my Bio lab.  This has caused me to only focus on the important tasks and to make sure I go to a workspace where I can focus and have no distractions.  I learned to put my phone on silent, my apple watch on Do Not Disturb, and to complete the task at hand.

Being in the student organization Orthodox Christian Fellowship has really been a joy in my life and has brought me many great things.  I have many new friends that I have become close with because of our shared faith.  I have learned time management skills that I can carry with me for the rest of my college years and beyond.  Finally, I have learned that you can meet great people anywhere as long as you are willing to go out and talk to new people.

The past three weeks have been quite an adjustment from being a high school student, and now a college student.  There are many differences including the workload and the difficulty of the classes.  One class in particular has been challenging to me: differential equations.  I took this class in high school, but through a community college, so this semester has been significantly more challenging.

I started running into trouble the first day because my professor has an accent that is hard for me to understand.  In class, I would be trying to figure out what he said in the first part of the sentence and miss the next part of his sentence.  I tried to work with my classmates to figure out the homework, but there were still some things I did not completely understand so I decided I needed to ask for extra help.

Unfortunately when I looked online, at the math tutoring, they did not provide math tutoring for my class so I decided to go to my professor’s office hours.  This was a lot of help.  I was able to ask him about every individual question I had and he could answer them in detail.  One thing I definitely liked was that I knew that I would be learning the right way to solve the problem because the solution came right from the professor.

I was a little nervous the first time I went to office hours because I had some pretty big questions about the homework and thought that my professor might think I am not very smart.  I wouldn’t say that there was a stigma about getting help because we all know that college classes are hard and are not easily mastered, unlike the courses in high school, where there definitely was more of a stigma.  This was a new experience for me because for the most part I have been able to figure out my problems on my own or with the help of friends.

I definitely have learned from this experience that help-seeking definitely has a positive impact on student success.  I have slowly started to understand my professor’s accent but definitely holding a conversation with him helped me understand his fluctuations.  Additionally, he taught me some new tricks from calculus that help make the problems we have this year much simpler.

One of the things that I did learn from this experience is that with a thing like office hours you can really go in with many questions or you can just go in with a broad wondering and you can just have a conversation about it.  As long as there are not other students to be helped, you can tell the professor that you are confused about a topic and because it is one-on-one, they have the chance to walk you through the process and explain and find your questions along the way.  On the other hand, with regular tutoring, you come with your homework to work on and they help you with the individual problems you are stuck on.

After finding my way to the office hours and really receiving the help that I needed, I grew in my own confidence and now it will be much easier to ask for help in the future.  Additionally, in high school I actually was a tutor myself and would definitely consider doing it again.  I enjoy helping others and spreading the knowledge and tricks that I have learned in my studies.

Below is a picture of the chalk board in my professor’s office.  I had questions on a few of the homework problems and I worked the problem out on the board as he watched and helped.

All in all, I would definitely recommend academic help for anyone who is having trouble in a class.  If you get the help early, you will be way less stressed because you will be able to stay on top of your homework and the course itself.

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