After yet another semester of online classes, I am very fortunate to have found many opportunities to engage with my community outside of the classroom. The most prominent of these has been volunteering with Hospice of Central Ohio, in which I volunteer at OSU’s University Hospital once a week, while being assigned patient companions. This has been a very eye-opening experience, and has further driven me to pursue medicine, although it can take an emotional toll. My first and latest patient whom I was a companion for has recently passed away, and this is just the beginning of learning to separate my own emotions toward patients from seeing this as part of my future profession.

I plan to stay in this position while taking courses this summer, and I have accepted an unpaid research position at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. This team studies psychological phenomena that impact patients and their families on the pediatric oncology unit at Children’s, and I am very excited to be a part of the work being done. I look forward to finally being involved in clinical research and having the opportunity to further hone skills that I have gained from past research in emotionality and pharmaceutical chemistry.

While these two accomplishments seem particularly relevant to my future career in the medical field, I have also declared what could be considered a second, unorthodox minor, in African history. African history and politics is a personal interest of mine that I have found through memoirs and documentaries, and I look forward to learning more about this subject in my coursework this summer and beyond.

Online courses and the lasting effects of the COVID pandemic have been limiting in a number of ways, from losing internships to feelings of burn-out, but I feel that I have found a number of ways to still enhance my college experience. This also includes starting a Bioethics Book Club for this summer semester, with our first book being Flowers for Algernon. I also have been able to keep myself afloat financially as a DoorDash and UberEats driver. While times have been tough, the growth and experiences from the past year are not something I would trade for a time of normalcy, and I look forward to what summer semester brings.