As you may be aware from my previous posts, I am a student at the Ohio State University currently double majoring in Physics and Math. One may expect that with the undertaking of a double major there comes a fair amount of stress and homework. This is correct. I often find myself faced with several assignments due in the near future, and while some are the simple e-portfolio post or the reading of an article the assignments from my major courses (currently Physics 1250H and Math 1181H) can be quite a challenge. Due to the quick nature of these classes many of the homework assignments may cover topics that were only briefly discussed in lecture, but are important to the course nonetheless. In the past it was all I could do to read the material from the text book and try to learn what I could before going on to the assignment. Between the additional heavy reading and doing the assignment itself I had little time left to study or prepare for the weakly quizzes that Physics 1250H awards the students. For the first few weeks of courses I found this pattern to be seemingly unbreakable, and devoted copious amounts of time to work and study. I had always heard that college would be a big step up from High School, but the resources required to adequately complete all of my assignments left me with little time to eat or sleep. I knew about office hours for my professors, but the times that they were offered usually conflicted with my class schedule. Fellow students in my classes did not seem to be missing out on the sleep or calories that I was, and when asked how they managed everything they were more than happy to produce a list of study spots where one could receive extra help on assignments from upperclassmen or even graduate level students. Now these locations ranged from the usual (18th Avenue library, Thompson Library etc…) to the less common (businesses off campus and online forums). I attended a few of the sessions offered at the libraries but found them to be a little too popular to get any effective help. Some what put out I just accepted that I’d have to buckle down and get used to the strenuous life. Then one day as if by fate, after my last class of the day located in Smith Laboratory, the skies let down a bath of rain. Having no plans to slosh all the way back to my dorm in my shorts and T-shirt I sat down and began to work on my Physics homework, in the “physics lounge” of Smith Laboratory. Upon reaching a fairly nasty problem that I could not satisfactorily solve, I vocalized my frustrations rhetorically. Then the young lady across from me looked up from her book and asked me what physics I was in to which I gave the usual reply of “1250H”.  She informed me that right around the corner there was tutoring for all pre-graduate level classes, information which I had never received before. I quickly rounded the corner and found a bored looking senior sitting in a mostly empty room. When I showed him my problem not only was he able to solve it but he was also able to explain it, and ensured that I could duplicate the steps if it ever came up again. This was the kind of help and extra instruction I had needed. I now make it a habit to attend tutoring at Smith lab on Mondays and Tuesdays, and have seen improvement in my performance on my physics quizzes.

I am an active member of the STEM Outreach Program at the Ohio State University. As a member of the organization I get to travel to elementary, middle, and high schools around the Ohio State University campus and demonstrate several different scientific concepts. These include “the jumping jack” which utilizes a battery, two wires and a spool of copper wire to make a nail “jump” (due to the electromagnetic interactions between the aforementioned materials). I originally discovered the STEM Outreach program at the student involvement fair, which stuck out to me due to my deep love of science and math. Additionally, the club seemed especially fitting as I’d just left a managerial position at a Kumon in my hometown to attend Ohio State. Kumon is an early learning center for children aged three to seventeen with an emphasis on reading and math as well as improving how quickly the students can complete computations. As a manager I got to work directly with students and experienced first hand the joy of teaching. While I did enjoy working with the younger students and teaching toddlers their letters and numbers, my favorite students were those a little farther along in the program. Often the reading older students did for the program covered advanced principals of physics or major historical events in a relatively digestible fashion. Such as one paper students were required to read that explained the time warping effects of travel near the speed of light by utilizing the “light bouncing off of moving mirrors” treatment. While the questions presented to the students themselves were relatively straight forward (who wrote the theory of relativity? When did he publish it?) the questions that the students had after reading such a work were far more enjoyable for me to answer. Often after reading something as mind boggling as the basics of special relativity students would ask “is this true?” or “how can such a thing be?”. While I was unable to present the atomic clock experiments to the students at the center I was able to explain the results of the tests and their far reaching ramifications, such as length dilation and gravitational lensing. On one such occasion I was even able to explain the twin paradox, to a set of twins! The higher level math problems that the students worked on were also very fun to solve with them. I enjoyed reciting old rhymes I had learned as a child (“multiplying fractions is no problem the top times the top and the bottom times the bottom” and the quadratic formula to the tune of “pop goes the weasel”) and getting to see the students face light up when they finally grasped what initially seemed like an impossible concept. It is my hope that through my involvement with the Ohio State University’s STEM Outreach program I will be able to spark a love of learning in many more students. Than I know I will be able to contribute to the field of science in a fashion beyond just research; by inspiring the next generation of innovators.

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