I spoke with my mentee Meg Sophn and my co-mentor Eliza Stella about our second semester interview on the Explore Columbus trip for second semester. My mentee’s current major is early childhood education, but she is switching it to nursing! Below are the questions and notes that I took during the “interview” and a brief summary of what I learned as a whole about Meg.

ACES SEMESTER TWO INTERVIEW:

Are you enjoying your major? Why or why not?

• No she doesn’t want to be a teacher, not worth all the work
• Switched to nursing
• Don’t get paid enough for all of that work
• Pediatric nurse
• Higher reward

How have you gotten involved on campus?

• Loves to go to JO South because it is so fun
• ACES
• Block O- had mixed reviews; loved the experience but doesn’t want to be there again

What recommendations do you have for improving the ACES program?

• More focus on school and learning what being in a scholar’s program can benefit you
• Like the level of involvement
• Need more service events
• Academic events should be more resume building and leadership workshops, more professional development!

Do you think you will keep your same involvement next year? Why or why not?

• Adding a campus job
• Working at JO South maybe since it will be close to her dorm (Residence on 10th)

What has surprised you about Ohio State since arriving on campus?

• It feels a lot smaller than it once felt because it is more familiar
• More food options than she thought

Have you had the chance to explore your desired career through internships, field experience, etc.?

• Got to shadow a nurse- loved it and got to relieve some stress about being nervous around needles and blood as well as being more sure that she does in fact want this as her major

What kind of goals have you set for yourself for this semester?

• Working out more and she has achieved that
• Straight A’s which she was surprised by herself at and wants to keep it up

Through this second semester interview, I was able to learn more about Meg and her laid back and easy going personality. I am so proud of her for switching her major and being able to look forward to a career that she is passionate about. She is very mature and realistic when it comes to talking about nursing and that she will need an extra year of college as well as needing to first get into the program. She was very open to possibly having to do a different kind of program if she doesn’t get into OSU nursing, which is a very good approach to this possible outcome! I think that some people would just give up and switch their majors to something else, but Meg is determined to be a nurse which is such an awesome mindset!

Other than her career, Meg, Eliza, and I talked a lot about ACES and what we think could improve the program. We think that some professional development in the academics meetings could be very beneficial! We would have loved to learn more about what being a scholars student means and how it can help us at OSU and also in the world. I think that learning more about the actual academic help and benefits that the school, or the scholars program as a whole has to offer would be a great addition to this program! We all talked about how we love the on-campus and off-campus service opportunities and how we wished there were more of them!

Through this second semester interview, I learned a lot about Meg and also more about Eliza during this meeting! I love that we get to make friends while also learning more about ourselves, our passions, and our careers. I cannot wait to see where MEg’s career as a nurse takes her and am excited to support her along the way!

I went on my Exploring Columbus day in the second semester with my mentee Meg Spohn and my co-mentor Eliza Stella. We went to Stauf’s Coffee Shop. I loved being able to break my Tuesday routine to spend some time talking with Meg and Eliza! I know Eliza well from home, so it was really good to be able to learn more about Meg and get to spend more time with her. I think that meeting in a coffee shop is the perfect Into Columbus and Mentee Interview combination location because we are able to experience new things while being in an environment conducive to talking easily. More than learning about her personalities and life on campus, I learned a new coffee order for Meg is a “dirty chia” which I had never heard of! It was fun to watch Eliza help Meg with her order to make it less expensive and taste better since Eliza has worked at a coffee shop! Although Eliza worked at a different coffee place, it was cool to see her experience was able to carry over to Stauf’s and their practices! Eliza worked at the campus Starbucks at night and was telling us about how she did not have many customers coming in during the later hours of the day so she was able to actually take her time making the orders and was rarely stressed with a huge rush or a packed store! It was very interesting to hear and made me want to try to go to Starbucks later in the day more often to get my work done! The noise level is very important to me when I am trying to do my homework, so I think that I would appreciate going to a quieter Starbucks to get the most stuff done rather than going during peak coffee hours like I normally do! I was very appreciative of Eliza for giving me this idea and I am excited to try it out soon.

I would recommend Stauf’s to a friend because it is such a nice and relaxing place. I have been to multiple of their locations and I think that they are all very different in their vibes and atmospheres. My favorite location is the location on Neil which is in an old church building. I think that the atmosphere of the church and the beauty inside and outside really captivates me and makes me appreciate the coffee shop more do to its amazing beauty. I think that the coffee at each location is similar and tastes good, but is definitely not my favorite tasting. I think that the draw for me is the surroundings, not the actual coffee. Which is ok! I think that the Neil location also has the best quietness for studying. The space has high ceilings and the seating is relatively spaced out which makes it easy to focus and is not as loud as other locations. I do wish, however, that the Neil location had the food options that the Grandview location offers! I love their breakfast sandwiches and the fact that you can get fresh, yummy food at a local coffee shop!

I think that compared to the coffee shop we visited first semester, Roaming Goat, I liked Stauf’s better. I think that a coffee shop should be a place to get a refreshing drink, but also to socialize, work, and relax. The small storefront that the Roaming Goat has is not big enough to be able to do all of this! There were not many seats available and not many seats in general. I think that while the coffee was tasty, the location was not convenient because parking was hard to find, and the space felt crammed and small. I think that I would refer a friend to Stauf’s more than I would to Roaming Goat!

Here is a picture of me, Jackie Groeschen, my co-mentor Eliza Stella, and our mentee Meg Spohn. We almost forgot to take a selfie from the coffee shop, so I am glad we got this silly one! I think that taking pictures of moments like this is important and making them fun like this angle or silly show that we were having a good time and enjoying each other in the moment. It makes looking back on this image a better remembrance of the day and is a sweeter memory than a more formal picture of us at this Exploring Columbus experience! I loved having a mentee and also loved being able to share my experience as a mentor with Eliza!

I went on my Exploring Columbus day with my mentee Meg Spohn and my co-mentor Eliza Stella. We went to the Roaming Goat Coffee Company in the Short North. I really loved getting out of my normal Sunday routine to do new things with people that I do not get to see often. I learned a lot about my mentee Meg. I learned that this experience was not new to her, because she is from only 30 minutes outside of the city of Columbus, but that she had never been to the coffee shop which was good! I think that trying new places is a must even though you already know the city. I also think that it is fun to ger the same coffee order at different shops to see how they make it differently. Meg and I both got iced vanilla lattes, but Eliza stepped out and got an iced brown sugar cinnamon latte which she said was so good!

I learned a lot about Meg through our experience at the coffee shop and driving to and from there. I learned that she is an early childhood education major but might switch to nursing. We talked about her reasoning behind the potential switch, and she said that she worries about her tolerance of the medical procedures like giving IV’s and shots to patients. She said that she doesn’t love getting them so she doesn’t know if she will be able to administer them to others. She thinks that if she does follow through with nursing, she would love to be a pediatric burse which would combine her love and patience with children with her passion for nursing. We discussed her dream job as being a kindergarten teacher if she does pursue education because she loves that age and thinks that they would be so fun and rewarding. She told us that her current hardest class is Elementary Math because it is such a different way of thinking than the usual math class, and the grading scale is a very “all-or-nothing” scale with little to no wiggle room for error. It is also five credit hours which strongly affects her GPA. This was also a hard class for my roommate last year which was a very good connection point for us.

We then discussed the different areas to study, and we talked about a lot of different places. We talked about going to the libraries around campus. Meg mentioned that she likes to go to 18^th Ave library more than Thompson which is the opposite of me. This was something very interesting that we liked different places and is going to push us both to try new things and go to each other’s favorite places. She mentioned that sometimes the libraries were too busy for her to focus. I also told her about last year how my favorite place to do homework was in the Smith-Steeb study rooms on the Smith side of the dorm. She mentioned that she was going to try it out soon which was awesome!

When we talked about her high school experience, she mentioned that she played basketball and was in National Honors Society. She also has talked about the importance of making real friends and how she was excited to get away from her high school friends. She also expressed that this semester so far has been interesting with friends, and she has not found her best friends yet so far in college. She is, however, going to go through recruitment in the winter which will be so exciting! Both Eliza and I were able to give her reassurance about the whole process which was great for her to hear!

1. What has been your most challenging class so far and why?
   1. Elementary math- it is either yes or no and you need a certain number of points. It is 5 credit hours.
2. What kind of involvement are you interested in on campus?
   1. Hiking club would be cool but not sure if it’s a thing. Greek life, she is going through recruitment.
3. What do you think will be some challenging aspects of the ACES program?
   1. None, getting all my service hours and keeping track of them.
4. What is your dream job and why?
   1. Kindergarten teacher because I have a lot of patience with kids and have always wanted to be a teacher.
5. What has surprised you about Ohio State since arriving on campus?
   1. Some of my teacher classes are smaller and I expected every class to be huge.

Uncle Andrew

This is my common app essay that I wrote to gain entry into The University of Ohio State when I was a senior in high school. The essay explains a relationship with an individual with a traumatic brain injury and the impact our relationship had on both of us. I think this is a representation of my academic and personal self because it tested the limits of my character, not just my brain. I expressed emotion and personal stories through my writing instead of the usual factual based essays and papers that I had previously written for school. I learned a lot about myself as a writer through this experience and have applied those new realizations to papers in the papers that I have written since. This taught me that in order to stand out from my peers, I need to put my personal touch on everything that I do and not be afraid to add a little extra to everything, even a research based paper.

Poem Sonnet Analysis

This essay was written my senior year in my AP Literature and Composition class. I take particular pride in the accomplishments that I had in not only this paper, but the class as a whole. Always being a student that favored math and science classes over any literature course, I chose to take Advanced Placement Literature and Composition because I wanted to see how much I could push myself in school as a senior. This paper in particular was rather daunting because I am not a fan of Shakespeare whatsoever. Once I received a 6, the highest grade on the AP scale, on this paper, I knew that I had officially defeated the fear of old English literature that I had once had. I learned to always be open mined when it comes to schoolwork because you can surprise yourself with what you can accomplish when you set your mind to it. I have been more excited to write and explore literature after this experience.