My mentee was Abbie Williams. She is from the Toledo, Ohio area and is majoring in special education. She is also looking into picking up a minor however she has not decided on one yet. Abbie and I are both education majors and are passionate about education. We have similar personalities and have had similar experiences in transitioning to college. Abbie and I are both involved on campus however in different ways. Outside of ACES Abbie is involved in Wishmakers, Students Supporting Students with Disabilities, and Delight Girls Ministry and I am involved in the Ohio Student Education Association, College Mentors for Kids, and Studio Dance.

From the first to second semester Abbie grew in her confidence in her classes. Two of her classes, Math 1125 and Math 1126, were a series in which she took on in the fall and the second in the spring. During our first semester interview she told me that Math 1125 was the class that was most challenging for her. In our second semester interview she told me that she had done well in Math 1125 and was not concerned about Math 1126. I was really happy for her that she found more confidence in these classes because I know that they are difficult as I took them last year.  Another way that Abbie has grown is in her involvement. In her first semester she was only involved in ACES and Wishmakers. By the second semester she had joined two other student organizations. One, Students Supporting Students with Disabilities, is related to her major and career path and the other, Delight Girls Ministry, is something that is out of her comfort zone.

Throughout the year I have grown as leader by being a mentor. Having the opportunity to mentor Abbie has helped me to become more confident in my leadership skills. Accountability is definitely a skill that I have gained as a mentor as it was my responsibility to plan our different events and check in on her throughout the year. I also learned about how to identify what Abbie needed help with and how to best support her. This is an important skill I will continue to use in my leadership positions so that I can best support those that I help.

I mainly mentored Abbie on her academics. Being in similar majors, I have taken a lot of the classes that she was in. I was able to help her with Math 1125 and Math 1126, classes that many education students find challenging, and other classes that are required for education majors. Along with classes, I also helped her navigate the ACES program and find ways to complete the requirements as the twenty hours of service requirement can be a little daunting for first year students. Socially, Abbie made a lot of friends with other students in the ACES program who live in her hall. Abbie also did not have that difficult of a time transitioning to Ohio State so I did not need to focus on that in mentoring her. Instead I helped her with finding student organizations to join. I think that joining student organizations makes your college experience so much richer and I wanted Abbie to be able to be a part of some organizations that she feels passionately about.

I think one of the main benefits of the mentoring program is that it gives first years students someone to help guide them through their first year at Ohio State that is more personal than the peer leader they were assigned to at orientation. The mentoring program also is really helpful in helping first year students feel more comfortable with ACES requirements and give advice on classes and student organizations. I know that it was very helpful for me as a mentee and for my mentee to get advice on some of our more challenging classes. Another benefit of the mentoring program is the Explore Columbus events. As a first year student it can be daunting to leave campus. The Explore Columbus requirement however gives first year students the chance to leave campus and explore the surrounding city without having to figure it all out by themselves. Overall I think that the mentoring program is a really great way to help first year students adjust to college life, make friends, and explore their new city. As a mentee the mentoring program connected me with someone that I could ask all my questions to and feel confident about what I was pursuing at Ohio State and as a mentor I provided that same type of support to Abbie.

I was one of the captains of my high school’s dance team, the Bruinettes, during my senior year of high school. This position taught me many important leadership skills. First, I learned that leaders always need to be prepared. A part of my role as captain was to choreograph the team’s routines. Since I never knew when and how long we would have time to learn the routines, I always had to have my choreography prepared to teach so that practice was productive for the whole team. I also learned a lot about compromise. The year that I was captain saw a lot of changes. We had a new coach, new uniforms, and new policies. My team was so accustomed to the previous way that we did things so the adjustment was difficult for a lot of girls. As a captain, I worked with the dance team coach and marching band director to compromise on certain aspects that my teammates felt strongly about. Overall, I think my experience as a Bruinettes Dance Team Captain has helped me develop leadership skills that I can apply in many areas of my life and my future.

This is a routine that I choreographed along with one of my co-captains.

During my senior year of high school I took a class called Honors Advanced Science Seminar, which was a part of my MedTrack program requirements. In this class I learned about scientific research and the process of how to create research projects. The final project for this class was a group mock research grant proposal and presentation. The project mimicked how scientific research is formed, proposed, and eventually funded. My group began by identifying a topic that we were interested in. We chose to look at how social media affects children’s self-esteem because of the prevalence of social media use by the youth today. Then, we had to compile thirty research articles that pertained to our topic. My group members and I each found five articles that we read and became experts on. We spent many class periods combining our knowledge and connecting our ideas. Then we wrote a literature review that compiled our research on the topic. After the literature review, we explored holes in the current research that has been done on the effects of social media. We found that there was not a lot of research showing the effects that social media has on young children. We thought that this would be an important topic to research because social media is heavily used by young children. Once we chose our research question, we began formulating our experimental design. After developing our experiment, we created a presentation that mimicked a grant proposal presentation. Our project culminated at the MedTrack Senior Mock Grant Proposal Conference where we presented our project to a panel of judges from the MedTrack Advisory Board.

This project was a hands-on experience of the process of creating scientific research. This project, and the Honors Advanced Science Seminar class overall, piqued my interest in research. With the foundation that I have received through this project and this class I hope to be able to participate in scientific research as an undergraduate student at The Ohio State University.

Literature Review

Mock Grant Proposal Presentation

Example Survey