I went to BuckeyeLink recently to fix issues that I had with my my account.  The first thought I had once I was going to BuckeyeLink was that it was far.  Just kidding, I thought it would be interesting to see what other amenities OSU had to offer it its students.  I was astonished looking at all the campus resources I could go to, but I thought that BuckeyeLink was the most beneficial to me and efficient at the time.  Personally, I did not realize that OSU had so many career and internship planning services which I thought would also be very useful in the future to help guide my path.  When I went to BuckeyeLink I chose to walk-in since they did not require any appointments.  At first I thought I would have to wait, but the amount of people they had once I got there was very beneficial since I could get my questions answered. I was glad that there were so many people knowledgeable on all things OSU related even though a lot of the questions I was were not based off of academia.  I had many questions regarding financial information with my account and my student status and I did in fact get all the answers for my questions.  I do not think many people know that BuckeyeLink is there to help if there is any need, or they don’t know where to go for help so the only growth I could see with this service is advertising the source more so more people can go as well.  Once you are there, most of the workers should be able to answer a variety of questions about the Ohio State so I was very glad this was organized very well.  It was a perfect place even for incoming or transfer students to ask questions and easily get assimilated into the Ohio State University atmosphere.  This is something really helpful that many people who do move here from somewhere else don’t always know about but would definitely be helpful.  I came for the first time to BuckeyeLink in high school for helping with my college credit plus class.  My schedule planner and my account had a few problems so I decided to stop by to get help on how it work it then.  They were able to teach me, in high school, how the best way to plan my college credit (or Ohio State Academy) classes would work.  I have not seen many other colleges offer as much as OSU, I don’t believe that OSU is missing a big support service from what I know everything is very helpful!  I do sometimes see that there’s colleges that offer a lot of support to students’ mental health, especially during exam seasons when everyone is very stressed like having activities or support dogs to just calm people down.  OSU currently does offer mental health services but this could become a wider range since more people can use it that do not.  Other than this small thing, I do not see what more OSU can do to offer its students!

I went to a Physical Chemistry Seminar about molecular dynamic simulations of bio molecular crystals. I went alone, hoping to gain more experience in how research and research presentations are executed.  As I entered into the lecture I was surprised to see the myriad of students, professors, and faculty that was present at the seminar.  Most of the people there were graduate students in the physics and chemistry field. I ran upon a couple other STEM EE scholars students at the seminar but other than that, I don’t believe I saw many other undergraduate students.  It made me feel a little out of place since I was very uneducated about the mechanisms of the systems that were presented and since I was younger than many other people.  I was almost intimidated by the older audience since they all seemed to understand the entire lecture.  I was not able to talk with the speaker but I did talk to some graduate students that were sitting around to ask questions that I had since many of them were well educated and interested in the topic present.  I understood the basics of the lecture since it went over some of the things that I have learned previously in my chemistry and physics classes.  Also some of the information went along with what I was learning and the future topics of my chemistry class here at OSU.  It was interesting to see how this one person’s job is so concentrated on just one small section of science and how much time they dedicate to learn that much on that topic.  It really made me see how diverse science and math as a whole is and how one person can really do anything within it since there was so much information in just a small topic about physical chemistry. Second semester, I will be joining and helping out with research in the field of neuroscience and radiology, which doesn’t have much chemistry in the study so it didn’t help me see much into the research I will be doing but it did help me realize how much time, effort, people, and resources go into research.  I did not expect to see that it was so well done without any “mistakes” and how research really does travel the world.  The researcher who was speaking came from Michigan State University, which in reality is not too far from where we are but it is very interesting to see how impactful research is since the world really does move another step from where it is when something new is discovered. There is a lot of merit in being active in this academic community as an undergraduate student since one can get more exposure into the “real world” and they will understand if they really are interested in a topic or not.  Along with this, being more educated in a subject is mostly always beneficial to understanding more about anything academia related.  I think this helps with networking as one student can communicate with more speakers, professors, faculty, and graduate students.  I personally would not believe it would be a waste of time since so much can be achieved if the time and resources  in the lectures is used wisely.