Two weeks ago I went to the biweekly meeting for the STEM Outreach student organization. I found out about this student organization at the student organization convention several weeks ago. Of all of the organizations that spoke at this convention, the STEM Outreach was the one that I felt an immediate connection to. This is due to multiple aspects of the organization which I have practiced in high school and wish to continue in college. In high school, I was President of my High school’s FIRST Robotics team. FIRST is an organization that not only pushed for creation and creativity, but it also pushes for the spread of creativity to those who aren’t fortunate enough to be apart of it. Our team would volunteer hundreds of hours a year to schools and other areas teaching kids some of the basics of robotics. Some of these things included teaching kids how to conduct electricity through play-doh. The STEM Outreach club does this same type of outreach to local schools in the Columbus area. Teaching them a lesson on a scientific topic. As I entered the meeting I was very excited to see what it would be about, and I was happily greeted with a massive pizza pie waiting in the front of the room for any members of the meeting to take from. Once the meeting began they gave some updates on future events and then quickly went into a demo on one of the presentations that we will be doing at the local schools. This presentation was creating a homemade flashlight out of the provided materials. Some of these materials included a cardboard cutout (which would turn into the shell of our flashlight), a battery, wire, tape, and a paper clip. The leader of the presentation then took us through all of the steps showing us how to create our flashlight.

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As I was going through the steps making this very simple flashlight even I, a 18 year old college student, became excited by going through the steps and getting to the final outcome. This made me wonder how much the kids at the schools love doing these activities. I can’t wait to soon see their amazed faces as they figure out how to conduct electricity from a battery to a small light bulb. The reason why I already love this club so much is that I feel all kids deserve to be exposed to all types of activities so that they can start to grow some kind of idea of what they want to do later on in life. One thing that I have always felt is unfair and also hindering the growth of society, is the unequal access to opportunity throughout the country. Thankfully, I grew up in a very good school district which exposed me to many different career fields and definitely helped guide me to the major that I am currently studying, chemical engineering. Unfortunately there are a lot of kids out there who aren’t exposed to the wide array of paths that they can choose. This is why I feel so strongly about the STEM Outreach organization and many other organizations like this that are offered at OSU because of the impact they have on the future adults of the world. I’m so glad I joined this organization and can’t wait to further participate in it!

A couple of days before my Calculus l midterm I decided to go to the Mathematics and Statistics Learning Center (MSLC) seeking to receive academic support on the homework I had due that day along with some tips on how to further study for my upcoming midterm. My first impression of the MSLC was that it would be a waste of time because throughout my life I have always been someone to study and also do work alone at my desk at home. However, once I was seated at the MSLC I realized that not only was I getting math help there, but I was also putting myself into an environment that is more suited to do work in.

I began my online Calculus homework and was breezing through the first few questions. After several minutes I came across a question that I began to struggle with and became lost on. So I raised my pink card which indicates to one of the tutors that I needed help. I am a type of person who really doesn’t seek help from others so at first I was a little weary of raising my card. However, to my surprise I was greeted by a very nice undergraduate student who helped me understand the problem. I was very pleased that he did not just simply show me how to do the problem, rather he quickly wrote down a few things that helped me greatly understand the limit problem that I was struggling with. While I had the tutors attention I asked him what were the best ways to study for the midterm. He said looking at your notes is a great resource, but the only way to truly understand math is to actually do it. My brother who is currently a junior here at OSU had many words of advice for me, but the one that really sticks out to me is “practice, practice, practice… that’s the only way you are gonna understand how to actually do math”. And this is true, throughout High School I had struggled in math until I finally realized what the issue was. My issue was that I did understand what was going on in any specific problem, and if I looked at the solution I would understand how they arose to it, but I would not be able to actually produce it when handed the problem. I finally realized that all I had to do was more and more practice problems and that is the biggest tip I can give to anyone who struggles in math or any topic.

While I was talking to the tutor he also gave me information on how to access practice review sheets for the midterm that were located on the MSLC OSU website. These review sheets came along with answer keys with worked out problems so that you can check over your work and actually see where you went wrong. This ended up being a great resource for me as I continued to study for my midterm that was yesterday and it really helped me prepare and get the grade that I wanted. I’m so glad that I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and went to seek help at the MSLC because if I didn’t I would have struggled with my homework, but more importantly I may have done worse on my midterm.