Hello, my name is Taylor Hassel, and this ePortfolio will be documenting my progress throughout my next two years as a STEM scholar at The Ohio State University. In the next four years, I hope to achieve a degree in Applied Mathematics to be used for business application in a company setting, and along the way, I will be documenting my progress on this page in four separate categories: Artifacts, Career, G.O.A.L.S., and Year in Review. The Artifacts section will include a description of any items I find to be of significant physical or emotion value to me, and why I find them to be important. The Career section will document any experiences I have that could be helpful in my future occupation. This section will be continually updated throughout my career at Ohio State. Another section in this ePortfolio is the G.O.A.L.S. section. This section will describe how any activities I participate in contribute to the G.O.A.L.S. (Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement) of the Honors&Scholars program. Finally, the Year in Review will reflect how I have evolved as a student throughout the past year, and my goals for improvement in the future. I look forward to seeing how these four categories will help to shape me into a successful adult over these next four years at The Ohio State University.
Year in Review
Looking back, it is amazing to me how much I have changed and grown after just my first year of college. Reflecting to the girl I was a year ago, I see someone who was extremely eager, but also timid, quiet, and though she would never admit it, very scared. Now as I see who I am today, I can observe subtle differences in myself that mark the qualities of a more mature woman. After only I year, I can see clearly how my organizational skills, my time management skills, and my confidence in who I am and what I want to do have greatly increased, thanks to not only my involvement in STEM EE Scholars, but also through the other co-curricular activities I decided to join.
If this first year in college has taught me anything, it’s that organization matters. When I was in high school I was never very organized with my workspace, my assignments, or my schedule, because it didn’t really matter. Back then, I could turn is my assignments late, or my parents would help me keep track of everything I had to do, but the whole time I was conscious of the fact that I wouldn’t have this luxury when I came to college. As I began my first semester of college, I made it a goal of mine to keep an organized planner, so that I never missed an event or assignment. Looking back from the end of my first year of college, I couldn’t be more grateful for how keeping a planner helped me to stay on top of all my assignments, and its fulfilling to know how far I have come from an organizational standpoint after just one year.
Another skill I am grateful to have developed is time management. When looking at all of the things there are to do in college like classes, homework, social and academic organizations, going to the gym, and still managing to make time for fun, eating and sleeping, it’s hard to believe it’s possible to balance all of those things and still keep your grades up. Though it took some time for adjustment, by my second semester, I had found a way to balance all of these things. I am extremely proud that I have found a way to be a member of the STEM Scholars, Women in Math and Science, the social sorority Delta Delta Delta, all while managing to make time for fun, and sleep, and manage to keep all of my grades up. I found over time that the most effective strategy for time management is prioritizing and keeping my planner up to date. I realized that if I did my homework right after classes as I ate lunch rather than take a break and relax, I would have more time in the evening for any other events that I wanted to do, and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting all of my work done while I tried to enjoy any extracurricular activities. Thanks to my involvement in the STEM EE Scholars and other activities, I have learned how to make the best use of my time, and I hope to carry this skill throughout the rest of my working career and life.
Finally, I believe that the greatest thing my first year and the STEM EE program has brought to me is a stronger confidence in myself and what I want to do. Through not only STEM, but also Women in Math and Science, I have been challenged to come up with my own unique ideas and stand in defense of them. This has assured me of what I want to do as a Data Analyst, as well helped me to become more confident when defending my ideas and opinions. Additionally, being involved in a variety of different activities throughout my first year has made me more confident as who I am as an individual. Being in college has helped me to become more comfortable standing up for my opinions and beliefs, and I know that this will be in important quality to have as I make my way into the working world in just three short years. I couldn’t be more grateful for what this year has given to me, and I look forward to seeing how much I will grow in the years to come through my involvement at Ohio State.
G.O.A.L.S.
Personally, I believe that the G.O.A.L.S. that have been outlined in the Honors & Scholars program at Ohio State help to push students to improve in more ways than just the five outlined in the acronym. The G.O.A.L.S. encourage students to become more globally aware, to pursue their own original inquiries, to achieve great things from both an academic and leadership standpoint, and to engage in service both on and off campus. Yet, in striving to meet these standards, I feel as though students accomplish move more than these five things. I believe that while engaging with the G.O.A.L.S. students also gain a certain confidence in themselves and their abilities, as well as provide an opportunity to build bonds with other students who are often different from themselves and those who they most often spend time with. By being involved in the Honor & Scholars program, and working closely with the G.O.A.L.S. I feel as though I have developed a number of skills that will help me in my professional future.
Ever since the beginning of my time as a Scholars student, two of the G.O.A.L.S. have always stood out to me, Global Awareness and Leadership Development. While I acknowledged the fact that all of the G.O.A.L.S. were useful to me and would help me to develop crucial skills, those two remained the ones that I was most interested in. I believe my interest in Global Awareness stems from the fact that my family vacations almost every year, and I have been lucky enough to see and experience things that many people my age have not. I am also lucky for the fact that when we do visit these places, we do not just sit around the place we are staying, we venture out in the nearby cities to try and get an appreciation for the area we are in. This has been most crucial whenever we visit cities outside of the United States, because I have seen that countries like Mexico and the Dominican Republic are more than just resorts and beaches, but rather places with a rich histories and a dedication to culture which impacts their everyday lives. Through the small peek I have had into what life is like in the rest of the world, I have developed a curiosity as to how other cultures and societies live, and thus my interest in Global Awareness has only increased as time has passed.
Though my interest in Global Awareness has been in the making for years, it wasn’t until much more recently that I began to notice the importance and relevance of Leadership Development in my life. Throughout my time in grade school, and even through most of high school, I was extremely quiet. Almost every year in at least one of my classes I would get knocked off points for lack of participation, or I would have teachers tell my parents that I seemed to know all the material, but I just needed to speak up more in class. Finally, in my junior year of high school I got my first taste of leadership. That year, I was cast as a lead role in my school’s spring musical and faced a new kind of responsibility, one that I fell in love with. I liked having the opportunity to inspire others and help push them to be their best, and this feeling motivated me to become the band secretary and a dance captain of the marching band. Though speaking up is still something I have trouble with sometimes, I love that the importance of Leadership Development in the Honors & Scholars program is helping me to overcome that and become a strong and inspiring leader.
In the future I feel as though I also believe that Global Awareness and Leadership Development will be the most relevant G.O.A.L.S. in my career. Someday, I hope to not only display my technical skills in my job, but also the skills that I have developed socially, and I feel as though being aware of the rest of the world along with possessing the qualities of a good leader will help me to do this. Since the rest of the world has always fascinated me, I am extremely motivated to strive for a job where I will get to travel, but I know that I will not get to this job easily. Traveling for work is not something done by most, and it is frequently delegated to those in higher positions of power in a company, thus why my leadership skills have become extremely important to me. I strongly hope that my time in Scholars program will help me to develop the global awareness and leadership skills I will need professional, because I know that my ambitions are lofty and will take a while to achieve, but I am willing to work hard to meets the goals that I have set for myself in my career.
Career
This year through STEM Scholars and numerous other clubs and organizations, I have learned a variety of skills that I know will be of great use to me when I get into the working world. So far, my biggest take-away from the STEM Scholars program has been the development of my ability to work with those who are different from myself. Up until this point in my life, I had never been challenged to work on unique projects like the ones we completed in our STEM Scholars seminar with people who were much different from myself. Projects like “How to Draw Toast” and Case Studies forced me to consider other points of view that didn’t always agree with my own, and to acknowledge how these different thoughts could be incorporated with my own. Additionally, this scholars program has educated me on a variety of other STEM careers that I had no prior knowledge on, but will most likely be interacting with someday once I enter the working world. Alongside the STEM Scholars program, I worked closely with Women in Math and Science, or WIMS for short this year. In WIMS, we used original ideas to put together a program to raise awareness of STEM careers among Girl Scouts because women are often outnumbered by men in math and science fields. Putting together this program helped improve my organizational and leadership skills exponentially, because we spent the whole year putting together this program without guidance or ideas from Ohio State staff. For me, the development of these skills I know will be crucial in the work force someday because I hope to manage and mentor others in my career. Finally, I also found applicable work skills in a fairly unlikely place, in joining a social sorority. While becoming a member of a sorority was something I chose to do for fun, I did notice that there were aspects of the recruitment process that I believe will prepare me for searching for a job. Throughout recruitment, I “interviewed” at all of the chapters, and learned that much like a job interview, you need to show case the things that make you stand out against other “applicants”. Additionally, the recruitment process taught me to be more personable, and how to make comfortable conversation with people much different than myself. All in all, the activities I chose to participate in throughout my freshman year of college have greatly helped me to develop as a person, as well as taught me many great skills that I will someday use when I search for a job and begin my career.
Artifacts
For my first artifact, I chose to analyze my family’s trip to Punta Cana this past summer. While tropical vacations are most often associated with beaches, relaxation, ad leisure, my family also took some days out of our trip to venture into some of the less tourist populated areas of the Dominican Republic, and learn more about a different culture. The first day we ventured out, my father and I traveled to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. While many tourists do visit the city, we made a point to take a historical tour, which would take us closer to the roots of this societies rich culture. Yet for me, the most meaningful day was spent with locals on an amazing tour of what it can be like to live in the Dominican Republic. On this day, I was exposed more to the labor, food, music, and life within the Dominican Republic more than I could have ever imagined. Our day started out at a cigar shop, where we learned the extensive process of rolling cigars, one of the Dominican Republic’s biggest exports. After that, we learned of the importance of livestock and farming to their economy, and helped to heard cattle with locals who do it for a living. At our next stop, we learned about another popular export, cocoa. We were given a demonstration as to how to cocoa is farmed, picked, then processed into the cocoa we see the the United States, which is a very labor intensive process. Finally, we ended our day with the most traditional food in the Dominican Republic, rice and beans, and some music. For me, it was extremely eye opening to get a taste of these two things, because it was so drastically different from what we saw at the resort. At the resort we had extensive choices when it came to our meals, and the music was what you might imagine to hear on a “tropical vacation”. Yet in reality, the food had been prepared traditional, and the music seemed to have much more meaning to everyone who heard it, which made me greatly prefer what I saw outside of the resort. In conclusion, by traveling to the Dominican Republic and venturing outside of the resort, I feel as though my knowledge of the world has been greatly broadened, and I would highly recommend to anyone venturing outside of the bubble of a resort, and seeing what life is really like in any country you are visiting.
About Me
As a freshman in college, I am perfectly aware that I am approaching some of the four most formative years of my life. Quite literally, since the day I was born, this time of my life has been in the making. I see college as I time where I will discover who I truly am, being in a new, unfamiliar environment since the first time I was born. Yes, as a child I was taught dos and don’ts, rights and wrongs, and, of course, yes’s and no’s, but this is the time where I get to go out on my own and prove that all of those lessons were worth something. People constantly say that college will be the best four years of your life, but I prefer to believe that while these years will be great, the future is so unpredictable that I can not possibly name anything as “the best” quite yet. Though, after eighteen years of preparation, I can’t help but be excited to see what is to come into my life within the next four years.
My name is Taylor Hassel, and this year, I am beginning college at The Ohio State University as an Applied Mathematics major. This, too, has been in the making for quite some time. From Kindergarten all the way through the 8th grade, I thought I wanted to do something that would make me well known. I wanted to act, I wanted to be an artist, I wanted to be a chef, I wanted to have anything other than a “boring desk job”. Above all, I aspired to be different. I didn’t want to be just another face in the crowd for all my life, I wanted something about me to be unique, and the easiest way to do that seemed to be having an “out-of-the-box” career. It wasn’t until later that I discovered that it wasn’t how I spent my time working that made me unique, it was how I spent the rest of my life. Throughout all of the time before I learned this, my parents simply listened and planted the seed that maybe I should pursue something in science, math, or engineering, but it wasn’t until high school that I realized they were right.
My sophomore year of high school is when I finally started to take some much needed accelerated math classes. Granted, I had been a year ahead in math since eighth grade, but I still seemed to breeze through them without much effort. Sophomore year was different, though: in Honors Algebra 2 And Trigonometry (HAAT for short), I was no longer one of the top students. I struggled to grasp some of the concepts at first, and I remember being frustrated, and wondering whether I was really as smart as I had thought I was. Yet, I also remember my father telling me that at some point, math would get hard. I would question myself and my abilities, and I might even think that continuing in advanced math was not the right path for me. When that time arrived, I was distraught. I had thought maybe he was wrong, or that maybe I was different, but to my dismay, I was not. As hard as I tried, that class never seemed to become as simple as the other had been in the past, yet, some how that just made my desire to be successful even stronger.
After that year, I moved on to Honors Pre-Calculus, and AP Calculus and AP Statistics the year after that. Somehow, as the math classes grew harder, my love for math seemed to grow stronger. Each new problem was a puzzle to solve, and on some days I’d even find myself calling my math classes fun. When it came time to choose a major, that’s when things got tricky. I didn’t know whether to follow Statistics in Actuarial Science, Physics (which I considered to be just another math course) into Engineering, or Calculus in Mathematics. I was back and fourth between those options and even more for a significant amount of time when I came across the STEM Scholars Program at Ohio State. In this program, I knew I would be able to be around like-minded people who all had the same academic interests as myself. It seemed to be the perfect fit, because I could follow which ever path I wanted, and still manage not to lose the connections I enjoyed so much in the other fields. I find that even in my small dorm of four I have these connections. Though I decided to follow my passion for math, I know I still have connections to my love of science through my Molecular Genetics, Animal Science, and Neuroscience majoring roommates. All in all, I have been extremely lucky to be a part of the Stem Program and be in Applied Mathematics and can not wait to see where Ohio State will take me on this amazing journey.
According to the Strengths Finder 2.0 book, my top five strengths are Positivity, Includer, Futuristic, Maximizer, and Woo, and I couldn’t find these strengths to be more accurate. These strengths indicate a personality that is overflowing with a love and passion for people, success, and overall happiness, which I couldn’t agree with more. As someone described with Positivity, Includer, and Woo, I see in my day to day life an appreciation for the people around me, and a desire for them to enjoy their time with me as much as I enjoy my time with them. I truly enjoy developing an appreciation for other people and their lives and believe that it helps to enlighten me and alows me to learn from them. These three strengths, along with the Maximizer strength, motivate me to spend quality time with people and earn an appreciation for all of the things that they do, and try to help them make the best of all their abilities. As a Maximizer and Includer, I really try to make everyone aware of all of the good they bring into friendships, projects, school, and just life in general, because I know that not everyone can easily see that in themselves. Overall, I try to use my strengths in my social life to make everyone feel happy, and to remind them how important they are.
I have also found many practical uses of my strengths in the world of academia. Being Futuristic helps me to motivate more towards my goals, and be able to focus on work in the time being, even though I won’t be able to see the benefits of it right away. I feel as though many college students find it challenging to focus because they only want to focus on the short term benefits rather than the long term benefits that studying and homework can provide. Because I am futuristic, I feel as though I can better combat this and create plans to help me study and get my homework done in a timely manner. Positivity also helps me a lot in the academic world, because I refuse to let one bad grade or experience bring me down, I instead focus on improving in that area, and doing better the next time. Once I finished my first midterm, I truly realized how different college is from high school, and needed to call upon my Positivity to help work through the situation and continue to improve in the class. Through these examples and more, I hope to utilize my strengths to the best of my ability in college to help me have a successful four years.
Once I graduate from college and start a career, I hope to utilize all of these strengths to the best of my ability in my workplace. Being an Includer and a Maximixer will hopefully be very useful because I hope to work a lot with other people in group tasks and projects in the professional life. I hope to make everyone feel as though they are being used to the best of their ability, rather than feeling as though they can not contribute properly because of their placement on the project. If I am able to avoid this, I feel as though I will be able to help motivate people, and help everyone use their best abilities to get the work done, and create a good product for my future company. I also believe that being Futuristic will also help in this sense to help communicate my vision of things to my coworkers so that we can all be on the same page. By being able to share my thoughts have have my coworkers share their thoughts, I feel as though we will be able to work together better and be more efficient. Finally, in the working world, I really hope to utilize Positivity and Woo to make my work environment a more fun and enjoyable place for me and everyone that I will work with, and create an overall better company for all who are employed there. In conclusion, I hope to use my strengths in the work place, as well as in school and in my everyday life to make each day more positive and enjoyable for all of those around me.