My first semester at OSU has been many things. It’s been inspiring, stressful, exciting, and fun all at once. I felt at the beginning of the semester that I had made an excellent choice in deciding to come to OSU. Reflecting on that sentiment now, I couldn’t agree more with myself from three months ago. However, the home I’ve found here wasn’t in the traditions and hype that made me excited to be here during welcome week. The home I found in this place has been in the unexpected – people I never could have imagined or anticipated would come into my life. My OSU home is in the friends I’ve made – in Baker East, in my classes, and in organizations and groups I’ve joined. It’s in the people who have inspired me – from my Gender, Sex, and Power professor Dr. Smooth to Jill Davis, who showed me that even a first-year student has the power to make a positive impact in the OSU community.

Parts of my OSU experience were what I expected. Like I thought it would be in the beginning of the semester, Calculus I is in fact very hard. I think I can pass it though, and since I’m currently considering a major in Social Work (stay tuned though, I change my mind a lot) that’s really all I need to do.

My view of the world has been made much bigger this semester, and it’s made me a more understanding person. I hope that my perspective never stops growing or changing, because as soon as it does, so will I.

Math and I have a love-hate relationship. Even though it drives me nuts, I keep coming back for more. It’s the most beautiful yet horrendously precise discipline, but I know that at the end of the day I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

Overall, I feel that the Top Five Strengths Assessment was very accurate in its evaluation of my talents as they relate to my personality. My top five strengths are Connectedness, Empathy, Context, Adaptability, and Intellection.

My top strength is Connectedness. As soon as I read my strengths report and found this to be my top strength, I was quickly convinced that the strengths test was an accurate depiction of me. I truly believe that all things are connected and that everything happens for a reason, and the description for the talent of Connectedness  said almost exactly those same things.

My second strength is Empathy. I feel that this strength also describes me very well because I have always had a knack for picking up on other people’s emotions. Studying people is fascinating to me, and I feel that my interest in it has simultaneously been fueled by and strengthened my talent for Empathy.

My third strength is Context. This strength has shown itself throughout my educational career in my interest in history. I feel that this strength is one that can only get stronger over time as it’s almost impossible to analyze the meaning, cause, or significance of an event without looking at the context in which it occurred.

My fourth strength is Adaptibility. The very first sentence in the description of this talent is “You live in the moment.” I feel that this statement is very accurate for me, but I also liked that as the description went on, it was sure to communicate that living in the moment doesn’t mean you don’t have plans for the future. It just means that you discover your plans as you go along and form them in a way that allows you to adapt to the context of any given situation.

My fifth strength is Intellection. This strength interestingly encompasses all of my other strengths. I am always thinking, but it’s almost never just a mindless drone. I think about how things are connected and what they mean in different contexts. I think about my future and how I can adapt to new hurdles I may encounter. I often think about people and what they’re doing, thinking, or feeling. I wonder if people think about the same things that I do.

My first week at OSU has been strikingly hot and sweaty (weather-related). It has forced me to talk to people I’ve never seen before and find buildings on a big college campus I’d only previously been to three times. I tried my hardest to come into this experience without any preconceived notions or expectations about what my experience would be like. I’m really glad that I (arguably) succeeded at that, because I really was not expecting my dorm to have cockroaches. I was very unpleasantly surprised when one almost crawled into my shower on my second night in Baker East. 🙁

However, I was also not expecting to live in the same hallway as some really awesome upperclassmen who were more than happy to answer all of my freshman questions, serious or otherwise. I was definitely not expecting to love every single one of my professors (even my zany Calculus professor, Dr. Snapp). Most of all, I was not expecting to feel like this place, this community, is my second home and that choosing to come to OSU has been the best decision of my life thus far.