About Me

Me and Eiffel TowerI am an upcoming Junior at Ohio State, majoring in International Studies, with a specialization in International Relations and Diplomacy. I am also currently minoring in German, though that may change after the upcoming summer I will be spending studying in Germany

My goal right now is to better my language skills in preparation for more time to be spent abroad in the future in both academic and career prospects. I hope to also be preparing to have my language skills tested so that I can always be looking to improve.

Academically, I am striving too declare a dual-degree in International Studies and German, with a minor in Korean. I hope to be able to do this with the help of credits from studying abroad, and the entrance credit I received from taking a multitude of AP classes in high school. This has only just begun to become a possibility, and so I intend to work towards that not only because I truly enjoy language study, but because I don’t want to stop learning about German culture. I look forward to also learning about Korean culture in the classes associated with the Korean minor in contrast to that I will be studying in German

The Goals of an OSU Student

Global Awareness

As a International Studies major, learning about new perspectives in the world is heavily integrated into my coursework. Throughout the school year, I have been applying for different study abroad programs. I am going to Germany for the summer of 2017 and look forward to learning about their election process, as I will be there just before the election for the Chancellor.

In addition to studying German, my Korean studies have also added a new layer of diversity just to my class schedule. My professors are all from Korea, and having their perspectives readily available has sparked an interest in me to continue to study both Korean and German, and quite possibly another language should my course schedule allow.

Original Inquiry

There was one class in articular that pushed me to think creatively in order to get the most out of the class: Cultural Diplomacy. The final for this class was to create a public diplomacy outline from the perspective of any politically significant person or organization, domestic or international, and make a mock-plan for them to implement to get their desired results. The project required all angles of the plan be examined, to look for holes in effectiveness, and it was required to give examples of plausible events that may ruin the plan proposed. This class was probably the most significant experience for a class in my major that I have otherwise yet to encounter.

Academic  Enrichment

Through my courses at OSU, I have continued to challenge myself. I try to make sure that my course load is both stimulating and manageable, and I have succeeded thus far. I try to choose my classes based on keeping them oriented toward my goals to work in diplomacy and cultural exchange, but also trying the other facets of the International Studies major.

Leadership Development

The strongest my leadership skills have developed this year was due to an assignment in class, where a group of us had to film and edit a 5 minute video. I took this chance to try to put some of the tools I have learned to make this group project run as smoothly and efficiently as possible. I used my organizational and communication skills to put together a filming schedule that fit everyone, and provided room for mistakes. Though there was still some issue with sticking to the schedule because of unavoidable problems, the project was completed with enough time to spare.

In general, I try to collect as many facts and variables about a problem, then try to come up with as many solutions as possible until there are at least a couple worth trying. I rely heavily on the participation and trust of those I try to lead, and will usually tell them if they aren’t pulling their weight rather than picking up the slack for them.

Service Engagement

I continued to participate in 4 Paws for Ability this year, though not as actively as last year. My continued involvement helped me to understand the issues with the service animal industry, and the public’s disregard for certain aspects of service animals responsibilities and rights. I was glad to be able to learn more about this issue so that I could try to advocate when there is a misunderstanding or people don’t fully understand the consequences of their actions on service animals and those who desperately need service animals.

Year in Review: The Second Year

My second year studying at OSU has been eye opening, to say the least. The continued study of language, in and outside the classroom, has continued to challenge and inspire me to work harder than what was ever required of me.  Participation in STEP and my Second Year Capstone Project both pushed me to develop and present original ideas.

Over the course of this year, new academic prospects have made themselves known. It will be possible for me to get a dual-degree by the time graduation arrives in 2019. I have also begun the study of a new language, while continuing the study of German. This presented a new challenge to language study, though was not as difficult as i expected. German and Korean are so different that I rarely struggle to switch between the two, though that may have something to do with the difference in difficulty level. I began German in my first semester, and began Korean at the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year.

Thanks to my German studies, I have the opportunity to study in Germany this summer, 2017, to improve my skills. I am looking forward to the immersion in the culture I have devoted time to learn. I am also looking forward to trying to get myself to Korea in the next two years or so, in hopes to refine my skills in Korean. Even if I cannot do this in the timeline I have outlined for myself, it is something I will be striving for until it becomes reality.

International Affairs Scholars Capstone Project

During my second year at Ohio State and in International Affairs Scholars, I worked on a project to present at a symposium at the end of the year. The first of its kind in the program, it was a way for those of us involved in the scholars program to invest time and energy outside of our classes working towards something of substance that we would then get to display and discuss with our peers.

Presented April 5, 2017

The goal for this project  was to improve my conversational language skills. Through this project, I was able to watch myself improve with time. Not only communication and understanding, but my confidence in speaking also grew as weeks passed, and it was noticed by the speaking partners I had since the beginning of autumn semester. 

Thanks to this project, I was able to put together a presentation and also motivate myself to devote more time in my free time to language study, as I have now seen firsthand the outcomes.

STEP Signature Project

Proposal

As a second year on campus at Ohio State, I had the opportunity to participate in the Second-year Transformational Experience Program. Through this program, I was able to build a proposal to aid in funding my project. Also by participating in this program, I was able to meet and develop a relationship with a faculty member at Ohio State, as she was my mentor and aided me in developing my proposal.

The project I was working towards this year was a study abroad to Dresden, Germany. I will be attending Goethe Institute for two months, during which, I will be studying German in a formal class setting as well as in an immersive context. I hope to drastically improve my language skills during these two months, and the grant through STEP will help me to finance this extraordinary learning opportunity. By the end of this study abroad experience, I will have finished my German minor, or begun working towards a second major in German studies.

The Peace Conference

Peace Conference Artifact

I went to the 3rd annual student peace conference on April 14, 2016. I was invited to attend by the professor of my Introduction to Peace Studies class, Dr. John Carlarne. The speakers I had the pleasure to listen to were Dr. Danielle Poe and Dr. Craig Hovey. I was most interested in Dr. Poe’s presentation, as she spoke about the different ways in which we can identify and respond to aggression and use tools to spread an interest in peace amongst our peers.

Her lecture introduced me to new ways to understand the emotions involved in verbal conflict. I began to understand parts of my own life in new way that I had not considered before, and then I learned how to deal with these things. I am so glad I went to this conference because it was eye-opening for me to see how little I knew about my own life and how seemingly insignificant things were perpetuating prejudice and stereotypes. Things that I could change within myself and in the people around me.

Service Pup

 

Daphne Spring 2016

Daphne, Spring 2016

I am a member of a club on campus called 4 Paws for Ability. It is an organization based in Xenia, Ohio and their goal is to train service dogs generally for disabled children who need them. They send puppies first to prisoners to help rehabilitate them and for them to give the puppies basic training. Then the puppies are given to college students who must go through a five hour training class. They are taken to every class and event that the student goes to in order for the puppy to be socialized and used to busy surroundings. The dog must also interact with children five or more times a week since most of the dogs are going to work with children and these encounters are recorded. They are kept on campus for one semester before going into official service dog training.

This is Daphne. I worked with her the second semester of my first year at OSU and although she was difficult at times, I wouldn’t give up that experience for anything. It was rewarding to know that after the semester was over, I had participated in helping a kid get the service dog that they needed.

The Official Site for 4 Paws for Ability

Year in Review: The First Year

This year was an entirely new experience for me. It was similar to what I imagine culture shock to be like. I knew I always wanted to go to college because I fell in love with learning new things, and a university was the place to do that. The challenge at OSU was expected, even if I wasn’t completely prepared for it.

I was never pushed past my capabilities in high school, not that it wasn’t challenging, I just never was challenged so harshly that I felt that I was incapable of completing a course. My first semester at OSU I dropped a chemistry class. I was not doing as well as I wanted to, even if I knew is was a “weed-out” class. I felt as if I was not going to do better no matter how hard I tried, and I struggled with this for a while before I realized that just because I didn’t do very well in a science course, it didn’t mean that I didn’t belong in college level courses.

The next semester I ended up taking more credit hours in total and did fine in all of those classes. This helped me to regain my confidence in my ability to keep up with the college work load I was expected to keep up with. I also took more classes that pertained to my major and minor areas of study, so I was more interested and involved in them.

I discovered that I really enjoy learning languages and that I want to be learning them for the rest of my life. I want to study several languages and to be able to travel in order to improve my language skills for the rest of my life, be it through my career or outside of it. Eventually I would love to live in the countries in which the languages I have studied are commonly spoken. I would like to begin languages in school then continue my studies on my own or through other resources.

My studies should help me to get to my main goal: to travel and experience cultures different from my own, and help to promote peaceful relations in tense situations.

Millennium Goals

Our Millennium Goal was universal access to education. We decided to focus on Southeast Asia in particular, the changes made to the region, and the effectiveness of those changes on the rate of completion of higher levels of education.

My focus was on the current challenges facing the region preventing accessible education to the children who need it. I new beforehand that poverty and funding issues were going to be some main points, and wasn’t surprised that gender equality was an issue in the education systems across the globe. I was not expecting the clarity of the goal to be an issue; to me, it was exactly what it sounded like: primary school for all. I was also not expecting the availability and adaptability of teachers to be a problem, but really, a teacher teaches for decades, and if they aren’t keeping up with curriculum in places that are less strict/standardized then their students begin to suffer.