Diversity Event

For the diversity event I decided to attend the Diversity and Inclusion seminar on Nov. 13. This event was help in the Journalism building and about 50 people appeared to be there. When I found out that I had to go to this event I was unsure of how I would find a diversity event.  didn’t know that there would be events all the time. During the event we were taught about our identities and what privileges that affords us. We were also taught about the difference between prejudice, discrimination and oppression. Most of what was taught I already knew. This seminar had some intro information about diversity and how our identities can affect us. Diversity is something that constantly affect everyone, especially STEM. Having people with different experiences is important to developing a more effective team. Diversity can also impact how people interact with each other. So far there hasn’t been too much focus on having diversity. It gets mentioned from time to time but it isn’t enough to become inconvenient or annoying. During the presentation i’m sure that someone was afraid to voice their actual opinions. This topic is very controversial and it didn’t seem like anybody disagreed with what the presenter was saying. During the presentation the title slide read “Who Am I? Who Are You? Who Are We?”. This title overviews the presentation and what we are going to be learning. We then acknowledged the land that we were having this meeting on as land that was used by indigenous peoples for meetings and exchanges. We did this out of respect for indigenous peoples. After that we went over some identities that we may apply to ourselves. Then we talked about how our identities may affect our lives. We then went over some privileges that we may have based on who we were born to be.I think that this presenter did a good job of presenting this seminar. She seemed very passionate about the subject. She also did a good job of making sure that everyone knew that nobody should feel bad about any privileges that they may have. This is important because nobody should feel bad about who the are, the same way that nobody should be discriminated against for who they were born as. The presenter had us split into small groups and discuss any questions she asked. This let us compare our experiences and discuss any opinions that we may have without sharing it with the entire class. This makes it easier to be honest about what we actually believe. Overall this event was helpful to review information that I have seen before. It also reminds me to be considerate of other people and their experiences. This is important because I don’t want to offend anybody accidentally by saying something that could be insensitive to other people. Not offending people is important to getting along with people in the workforce and making friends. I am glad that I attended this seminar even though it was mostly a refresher.

 

This is a picture of the title slide taken by me.

Campus Resource – Student Health Center

Since being at college I have gotten sick more than one time. At first I was unsure of where to go to the doctor. After doing some research I found that I could just go to the student health center. Making an appointment was easy. All that I had to do was go online and find a time that was free for me to go in and then schedule the appointment. Id was easy to do and there were many appointments available so I was able to get in 3 days later. When I got there all I had to do was swipe my BuckID and follow the instruction kiosk. It told me where to go next and what I needed to do. After that I had my appointment and when I left I was told that if I didn’t get better I was able to message my doctor in My BuckMD and go from there. My sickness didn’t go away and being able to message my doctor was helpful and really easy. Being able to connect to your doctors so easily is very easy and helps recovery. Getting prescriptions there is very easy too. On the first floor of the student health center is very helpful and makes getting prescriptions very easy. In that area there are also over the counter medicines being sold. This is a good idea because with some sicknesses you might only be able to treat the symptoms with over the counter medicines. The student health center is also located in the center of campus right next to the oval. This makes it easily accessible to all students and nobody has to go across campus to get there. There are also multiple appointment windows open every 2o minutes, making getting an appointment easy and flexible. I think that to improve this service there could be more instructions on the floor for the first time you go. I was unsure of what to do when I got there and I ended up going to the wrong place and I was late for my appointment. For the subsequent appointments I had the process of signing in was easy and efficient but the first time should have more guidance. All of the receptionist and nurses that I talked to were really helpful and really nice. Any questions that I had were answered. Another thing that I could improve with this resource would be to make more of them. OSU’s campus is very large and making a 20 minute walk in the cold while being sick is hard. There could be smaller ones around campus that you could go to for smaller illnesses and the one in the center of campus could be the main office and the place where prescriptions are picked up if needed. I think that this would improve the effectiveness and ease of the student health center and allow more students to utilize this service.

 

This is a picture of the student health center. It looks like it is new and a clean building.

“Student Health Center.” OSU.edu, OSU, Columbus, greatvision.osu.edu/clinic/student-health-services.

Campus Seminar

I went to a seminar titled: High Performance Computing for Persistent Homology Computation. The seminar was given by Simon Zhang. He is a PhD student in computer science. I went to this seminar by myself. I think that I was the only undergraduate student there. There might have been a few but most of them looked older than I am. While I was at this seminar I didn’t feel that out of place until the seminar started. There were 15-20 people there. While I was there I didn’t talk to anybody. I wasn’t sure about the etiquette of a seminar. The only people that I saw were talking looked like they were the PhD student’s research adviser. While I was there I was not really able to understand much of what was said. I have only taken high school computer science courses so most of what was said went over my head. For the first couple minutes I was able to follow what his research was trying to accomplish. Once he started going into the algorithms and code I was unable to follow. From what I could gather Simon and his team were developing software to accelerate the processing of a boundary matrix. They also improved upon an existing program called Ripser and made it significantly faster. Part of the improvement that he and his team were making was that they were making the code specialized for specific parts of the computer, because the GPU and the CPU can do different things better. He said that he was putting the code online so that people can edit it and possibly improve on its design themselves. I think that this really help the academic community grow by diffusing their ideas to the most amount of people while also allowing people to improve on the design. This was different than I thought seminars would be run. I thought that the seminar would be very formal and there would be a tight script followed but it wasn’t like that. The seminar was much more relaxed than I thought it would be. I liked the format of a seminar more than I thought I would. As an undergraduate student I think that going to some seminars are important, especially if you are planning on going into research or graduate school. Seminars like these help to show what you will be doing while you are researching. It also help show what your major or area of study is actually like in the high academic area. I do think that going to seminars that are to advanced for one to understand are a waste of time. For me, this seminar was too advanced for me to understand so I learned nothing useful aside from how seminars are run. I am glad that I went though because now I’ll know not to go to seminars that are so advanced that I won’t get anything out of it.

 

This is a photo that I took while there. It outlines where most of the processing time goes in Ripser and in their version of Ripser.

Academic Resource

The academic resource that I used was an open lab for Fundamentals of Engineering. It was held in Hitchcock Hall room 308. I was struggling to write an assignment that I was given in that class so I decided to go to get after class help. My TA had told me about this opportunity while in class earlier in the day. I went and did my work while TA’s walked around and helped whoever needed it. Seeking this help was not hard at all. All that I had to do was show up and ask questions. I felt that there was no stigma related to utilizing this resource, and I actually saw a couple people that I knew. I feel like stigma isn’t a problem with seeking out help at OSU. I have never had to seek out academic help before so this experience was new to me. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got there so I came ready to do whatever they asked me. It turned out to be based on what I wanted or needed to do at the time. I felt like this had a large impact on the assignment that I turned in and the help that I was given definitely helped me be successful on that assignment. I think that, in general, help-seeking positively impacts students success. I have a much better understanding of writing lab memos after going to this help session. I also learned how to look at feedback given on graded assignments. During this open lab I was given resources to complete an assignment that was given in class to do as homework. Then as we worked we could ask the TA’s questions when we had them. My questions ranged from how to format the assignment to how to calculate the Young’s modulus. It was really helpful to bounce our ideas off the TA’s. They were also very knowledgeable about what is expected as they are the people grading this assignment. This let us both get our graded work done and learn more about writing lab memos, which is what the assignment was. I do like this method of receiving help because we get all the information we need and none that we don’t but I do see where there could be a problem. If someone was timid and didn’t want to ask a lot of questions then they could lose out on information that they needed. I went to this help session with a friend who was also struggling with this assignment, and both of us were benefited by going.  I think that I could be a tutor. I know that the best way to solidify a subject that you understand is to teach it to somebody who doesn’t so not only would this help the person that I tutor but it would also help me solidify concepts. After going to this resource I will certainly continue to use resources on this campus to help with my learning. I expect that this would help with my grades tremendously as well as my learning.

 

“Hitchcock Hall.” Osu.edu, Ohio State University, Columbus, www.osu.edu/map/buildingImg.php?id=274&size=campusmap.

Student Organization Meeting

The student organization meeting that I decided to attend was for Design/Build/Fly. This organization builds a radio controlled model plane and flies it in the AIAA Design/Build/Fly competition. I found this student organization at the activity fair and it really got my attention. I went to this meeting alone but I did see people there that I knew. I think that this organization could help me because it is focused around aerospace and that is the field that I would want to go into in the future. I feel like this organization would also help me determine if I want to do aerospace or mechanical engineering because at this point I’m still unsure. The student leaders in this group seem like they are easygoing and nice and I could see myself becoming a student leader in this organization in the future. The meetings for this group are on Thursdays and on that day I only have one class so this allows me to do my homework and go to the meetings without much trouble. During this meeting I didn’t make many connections because the meeting was mostly going over the rules of the competition and showing us the simulator that the pilots of the plane use to practice. I’m not sure that I would be very good at being a pilot for the team though. At the activity fair I was having trouble finding a club that interested me and I wasn’t sure that I would have the time for this organization but after the meetings that I went to I do want to be involved in this club, and I would be willing to put the time in for this club. I think that the large size of this school does both good and bad for involvement. There is a club for everyone because of the sheer amount of clubs which is good but finding the one that’s right for you in all the clubs is hard to do. So many of the clubs are similar too and picking the one that you like can be hard. I don’t think that I’ll need to start a new student organization because there are so many at OSU already. I think it’s interesting how small the clubs can be even though there are so many students at this school. If there was a club that I think that I might want to start then I would consider starting one though. I don’t think that I would mind putting in the work for a club that I was really passionate about. I do think that I will continue my involvement in this club. One of the subgroups, the aerodynamics team, in the club really interested me too. This group is responsible for the design of the plane. This can get complicated because the competition has certain rules for the planes. Also, I feel like involvement in this club could be good for finding internships and careers in the field that I want.

 

This is the plane that DBF submitted into the competition last year.

OhioStateDBF (2019). Retrieved fromhttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4EobAJUEAAZ3rX?format=jpg&name=medium

Year in Review

[ “Year in Review”  is where you should reflect on the past year and show how you have evolved as a person and as a student.  You may want to focus on your growth in a particular area (as a leader, scholar, researcher, etc.) or you may want to talk about your overall experience over the past year.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

G.O.A.L.S.

[ “G.O.A.L.S.” is a place where students write about how their planned, current, and future activities may fit into the Honors & Scholars G.O.A.L.S.: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement. For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.

  • Global Awareness: Students cultivate and develop their appreciation for diversity and each individual’s unique differences. For example, consider course work, study abroad, involvement in cultural organizations or activities, etc.
  • Original Inquiry: Honors & Scholars students understand the research process by engaging in experiences ranging from in-class scholarly endeavors to creative inquiry projects to independent experiences with top researchers across campus and in the global community. For example, consider research, creative productions or performances, advanced course work, etc.
  • Academic Enrichment: Honors & Scholars students pursue academic excellence through rigorous curricular experiences beyond the university norm both in and out of the classroom.
  • Leadership Development: Honors & Scholars students develop leadership skills that can be demonstrated in the classroom, in the community, in their co-curricular activities, and in their future roles in society.
  • Service Engagement: Honors & Scholars students commit to service to the community.]

Career

[“Career” is where you can collect information about your experiences and skills that will apply to your future career.  Like your resume, this is information that will evolve over time and should be continually updated.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Artifacts

[Artifacts are the items you consider to be representative of your academic interests and achievements. For each entry, include both an artifact and a detailed annotation.  An annotation includes both a description of the artifact and a reflection on why it is important to you, what you learned, and what it means for your next steps.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]