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 information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

G.O.A.L.S.

I believe in global awareness and service engagement because I have always been fascinated with other cultures and religions. I have always wanted to travel the world and learn languages and celebrate the holidays of every culture. I think it’s fascinating how there can be so many people who believe and prioritize so many different things.

I have also had experience with racial profiling. I used to be bullied before high school because I was shy and smart but mostly because I looked different. Because I was from Pakistan, because I wasn’t an American citizen, because I wore a scarf. So now I believe that the key to defeating racial profiling is education. And helping to provide this education has been my goal since high school. I built a club to provide good dialogue between people with different beliefs and I hope to continue that as my community service in college and for the rest of my life.

I am majoring in biomedical engineering and I plan on attending medical school to become a pediatric surgeon. In the field I plan on building my career around, academic enrichment is extremely important. My family and I have always thought that school was my most important commitment and that everything else came in second to an education.

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 information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Artifacts

Stuck-image-1

 

Stuck is a movie about international adoption and the emotionally overwhelming problems that haunt the parents who try to adopt a baby from another country. It represents my time as a part of the ACES program. I watched this movie as part of an assignment from my scholars survey. I have been struggling to find good friends in the ACES program because I don’t live with them. But the friends that I do have are the best reward to my struggles.

 

About Me

Hi,

My name is Raghad Kodvawala and I’m a biomedical engineering and pre-med student. I am a Muslim and my family is from Pakistan. I came from Mason, OH which is a little suburb just north of Cincinnati. My high school graduating class was 831 students and about 10% go to Ohio State, which means I know a lot of people here. In high school, I consider my biggest achievement to be the club my friends and I created called the Muslim Students Association or MSA. Mostly we organized monthly meetings which we called “Interfaith Discussions”. In these discussions we invited everyone and anyone to come and talk to each other and ask questions in a seminar-type setting about faith and religion.

I was also a member of the marching band and a swimmer. I quit swimming in order to focus more on school but I loved marching band. Marching band became my family. I had transferred to Mason High School from another school and I wasn’t very good  at making friends. So I spent most of my time with them. During the season we spent all of our time together because we practiced so much. We would have practice for three hours everyday and we would be together all of Friday night and Saturday. But despite the time commitment, it was my favorite part of the fall.

In middle school I went to Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. I grew up in the Cincinnati Public Schools District so that’s where i went to middle school, although I lived 45 minutes away. All of my friends at the time were in that school, so my parents let me stay. This was the first time I really started to make friends. We were really close and we used to have sleepovers and spend all of our time together. Then I had to leave for high school, but we stayed in touch for a while. But eventually we lost touch.

My parents went to the University of Cincinnati when I was growing up so I went to elementary school near the college. We lived in a family style apartment in a residence hall called Morgan. In elementary school I was extremely shy, pretty smart, and a complete bookworm. I only made friends with a few people and they were the ones that my parents had introduced to me. My parents had a lot of friends who had children around my age and those were the friends I had growing up. I had nobody in my school so I would focus on working. When I used to finish I would help the teachers grade tests, because that was just what you did when you were done. I spent a lot of time helping them so I built a relationship with many of them. Most of the time my teachers were my best friends. And that just gave my classmates more reason to tease me. I never really understood what they were doing when they were laughing at me so it didn’t bother me. But now when I look back, I realize just how mean they were to me, and how hurt I would have been if I had been paying attention.

10995385_10204118743344739_2349547644202603858_n