College is like taking the first step on the moon. Because of that, I was scared. I didn’t know how to prepare myself, if I was ready to face what was ahead, or if I would be able to make friends. What I knew was, that I would try my best, whatever came my way. Like this, I attended the Ohio State Universities Morrill Scholars Early Arrival Scholars. Because of this program, everyone in it, including me, got to arrive a couple of days early to our dorms. During those few days that we arrived early at the university, we started a mission.
The main purpose of Morrill Scholars is, to promote diversity and help everyone understand it as well. In the program, we were around 70 (if not 80). We were divided into even smaller groups (around 10 students per group), which allowed for us to get to know each other better. Each group had two peer leaders that guided us throughout the whole program. Having the whole group for the program ready, we started doing different activities to get to know each other. Like maybe sharing our stories or opinions regarding current situations. We learned to respect each other, spend time with each other, even though we might have not known each other. We created trust, and alongside this, very important tools to help diversity and our society. We did exercises where we played games as groups. During these games we would either play something to get to trust and respect each other better, or games that involved team scenarios which we had to solve (to develop team work and understanding for each other). On our last day, we all went and did community service at a park near OSU. There we helped place mulch around trees. Some of us shoveled, others moved the cart wheels, and others filled the cartwheels with mulch. We did this from around 8:00 am to around noon. The amazing thing is, that time seemed to pass a lot faster, because we were all working together, and helping each other. After that, they took us to visit COSI, and we spent our last moments together, learning at COSI while having fun.
I gained so many things from this experience, that I can’t describe it in just a few words. What I can say is, that one of the things that I most loved from this experience was, that we all treated each other like family. Each day we would have breakfast together, we would go and walk or talk after our activities ended. Because to me this means, that we want to fight for the purpose that Morrill Scholars lives for, diversity and respect for each other in the world. After those days, I gained more courage to meet everyone that I could and fight for what was rightful in the world. This experience was immensely rich in everything that it gave us. It taught us to hold on to what makes us who we are, and use that to help the world.
Thanks to the Morrill Scholars Early Program, I wasn’t scared anymore. I was using my fear as a tool to go on towards my goals. Change is something scary, because we don’t know what will come from it. That is why, we must face it by being ourselves, and taking it step by step until the change is happening in our own way.