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Sitting down to do this review is one of the harder things I’ve done – choosing what to write about (what’s important enough to write about anyway) reflects the many questions raised over the last year about what’s most important to me. If sophomore year was about finding a place, junior year has been about diving in headfirst.

I reread my year in review post from last year-and it was a funny and wonderful example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. There was so much that I thought I knew about the world of analytics – but I took a leap of faith and was lucky enough to fall in love with my work at AEP, to be surrounded by and learn from people with backgrounds in Statistics and Economics and Computer Science and more instead of just big data buzzwords. It made me more aware of how much I had left to learn – so much so that I even changed my schedule halfway through the summer to register for Calc 3 and Linear Algebra this school year, two of my most rigorous (yet rewarding) courses after not taking math since high school. Continuing to work at AEP throughout the school year in addition to continuing in my research project (and making and learning from many mistakes) as well as taking the Business Analytics minor sequence courses has been an affirmation that I’m on the right track. I’m excited to continue my learning experience this summer at Nielsen as a data science intern.

Outside of career / school, this year has been equally challenging and rewarding. In the realm of food security, I spent a great deal of time volunteering with Franklinton Farms and working with Local Matters as well as trying to educate myself more about the issues and what I can do to be an advocate. Best Food Forward has had its ups and downs – growing pains yet incredible progress when I think back to where we were a year ago. Now marks the beginning of the end – of our involvement anyway, and the start of handing down the organization to the next generation, an exciting and scary moment. It does free us to spend more time answering questions of where we want to be long term and to foster the same passion and dedication in the next generation by being peer mentors with the new food security learning community starting in the fall. 

And with stepping down in some spaces, that means stepping up in others… a few weeks ago, I was elected to be the curator of TEDxOhioStateUniversity. This is an incredible responsibility and privilege to help curate and lead an organization that touches so many people and elevates so many stories, voices, and ideas worth spreading. After three years in the organization, I’m excited to dedicate myself to the group who helped me find and articulate my own story as well as the stories of the (first two!) people I have coached through the power of story-telling.

Besides this year’s worth of life updates oversimplified to a few paragraphs, how can I describe this year besides my most challenging yet? My first time doing 18 credit hours – and for both semesters? On top of my research job and AEP part time internship and going to the office between classes? On top of being Symposium Chair, Outreach Chair for BFF, being a logistics member for TEDxOhioStateUniversity and bringing Zero Waste to the event for the first time as well as coaching for Refuge and the Infectious Disease Institute, being in SFER and volunteering at the KIPP primary school! But I’m so passionate about each of these opportunities – it was worth being arm deep in trash and compost, waking up at 6 AM for Restaurant Depot trips, sending exactly 1.2 million emails, and mor

e. But besides being insanely busy, this was also a year taken for reaching out to check up on friends, to sometimes slow down and enjoy companionship and nature and being off the grid (even though I am notorious for responding to emails faster than text messages, regardless of the time of night) – and my trips to St. Petersburg for Buck-I-Serv and Costa Rica for study abroad really emphasized that.

But the big question really remains – how can I combine all of my passions into one thing? Or is my life going to be segmented forever? As I think about what I want to do after graduation, and knowing that many traditional job offers will be made in October and November whereas applications for many programs don’t even open until January, I have a lot on my plate to digest and questions to answer over the next few months.

Sophomore year was the year that I made peace with myself. After overcoming the transition to college, finding my place on campus, and learning how to live independently and care for myself, this year felt like I had control over my own adventure. In academics, research, service, and health, I was continually challenged – I’m so grateful for every second of it and being one step closer to the future and the person I want to be.

At the most basic level – living and eating. Living in Worthington, I could cook for myself, cancel my meal plan, and take control of my diet. In addition, I established a regular exercise schedule and sleep schedule. I never realized how much food, sleep, and exercise affected my mental and physical health my freshman year until the year was over– and I realized how much I had been struggling. Mental health is one of those things that gets shoved behind closed doors and never should be. This year, I’ve lost my freshman 20, become much more mentally and emotionally stable, and learned to control my stress. For whoever is out there reading this, never be afraid to reach out and ask for help and never underestimate how these factors affect you and your health.

In my classes and research, I’ve been challenged more than ever before and through this, have found camaraderie and lifelong friendships. More specifically, my pre-analytics statistics classes challenged me the most but also were immediately practical and relevant to real world experiences. Through this class, I’ve been using R to run simulations and analyze real world data sets in group projects. I could then use these foundational skills in my work as a research assistant, looking at existing and simulated data sets to see how different subsampling methods affect the performance of machine learning algorithms in making predictions in the face of class imbalances. Three months ago, this was all miles over my head; through this experience, I have learned so much and applied this knowledge in R, machine learning, and statistics. I’m eager to continue this journey this summer as a Data Science Intern at AEP.

And finally, the biggest impact in my life this year has been service. After spending a year and a half working (arguing, debating, researching, starting from scratch, etc.) on our class service project, Best Food Forward, it has been so incredible and rewarding to see it finally take off this semester. From getting a fiscal sponsor through Local Matters to recruiting our first new members to making our first bulk purchase, this semester has been an absolute whirlwind. For every business class that talks about being “agile” or how to implement marketing or how to keep good books or run operations and supply chain, this was living and breathing that experience a hundred times over in running what functions essentially like a small business. More than that, to see the impact of what we could do – as a bulk buying community centered around food, students volunteering and helping each other to reduce food insecurity on campus, and the $4000 we saved for over 200 people across the semester was incredible. Reading over post-buy survey results and crying over them when it finally hit me that we were making a tangible impact on the lives of our peers, seeing how much people appreciated/wanted/needed Best Food Forward and how many of our buyers self-identified as food insecure through either financial or geographical access has more than merited the 10+ (sometimes 20) hour weeks. Furthermore, getting out into the community through various volunteering and events at places like Franklinton Gardens (soon to be Farms) and the (new) Weinland Park Berry Patch (that we helped plant!) as well as hearing from amazing faculty mentors such as Brian Snyder and Jill Clark only furthered my passion for this cause (ha can you tell how passionate I am) and helped me realize how much more work there is to be done moving forward.

On top of this craziness – also TEDxOhioStateUniversity, Students for Education Reform, Symposium (!!), being a new mentor, and more, I have found the friends and relationships (new and old) of a lifetime, the late-night laughs and slices of pizza, the long nights of studying and commiseration, and all the big and little moments that added up to an incredible sophomore year.