Campus Resource – Student Health Center

 

When I first saw that we needed to visit a non-academic resource for STEM scholars, I instantly thought that it would be the perfect opportunity to visit the Student Health Center again. I did consider a few of the other non academic resources such as the Career Services office, but I knew I was going to need to see a doctor soon anyways. The past few weeks I had been feeling pretty sick and could not stop coughing, so I scheduled an appointment. This was pretty easy to do, as I had scheduled an appointment here earlier this semester for a sinus infection. All I had to do to schedule was go online to my BuckMD, fill out a few things, and then schedule an appointment for a time that worked for me. I arrived only a minute early to my appointment, which meant that I was able to use the self check-in kiosks instead of checking in through patient registration. After I went upstairs to the central desk, I ended up having to wait awhile before I was called back into the office.

The appointment went very smooth and quick, and all the student practitioners and the doctor were very professional. It worked like a normal doctor visit, where a nurse took my blood pressure, height and weight, and asked some general health questions before the doctor came in. Then the doctor came in and was very friendly, and I just explained how I had been coughing for awhile. The doctor was quickly able to give me a diagnosis of bronchitis and gave me a prescription, which was conveniently filled downstairs in the pharmacy. I think the Student Health Center is an excellent student service on campus, and so far it has met and exceeded all of my expectations. Appointments are extremely easy to schedule and prescriptions can be conveniently be picked up in the pharmacy in the same building! They have not only have general care and checkup services, but physical therapy/sports medicine services, dental services, and everything to nutritional services.

I think one area that the Student Health Services could grow in is by putting an office on north campus. This would be better for people who live on north campus and are unable to make the trek to the Student Health Center. No one who has the flu in the winter wants to walk 20 minutes in the snow to get treatment. This probably would cost a lot of money to put an office up (even a small one) and to staff it with a couple of doctors and nurses, but it could make a world of difference to those who are sick on north campus.

While I did not end up visiting the Career Services resource, I think that I will visit it soon, because I have heard how helpful they can be. And by getting help now, I can better plan out the next few years of college and get my career started. Ohio State offers such a complete range of student services, and all the ones I have visited so far have been excellent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STEM Seminar

When I saw the opportunity to attend a campus seminar event for STEM I was super excited. I had been wanting to attend one of the many intriguing and fascinating seminars on Ohio State’s campus, but had not set aside time to actually attend one yet. I opened the STEM calendar to see which seminars were to be presented in the next few days, and one immediately caught my eye: ‘Astronomy Colloquium – Determination of the Evolutionary States of Red Giant Stars.’ I have had a pretty strong interest in astronomy for years so I thought that this was the perfect one to attend over the biochem seminar offered around the same time. I had originally planned on going alone, but when I arrived to the lecture hall where the lecture was, several of my friends and even my roommate were there. This was nice because at least I was not the only undergraduate student, or at least freshmen, there.

Before the seminar actually started, several of the graduate students gave us looks when we sat down. The people behind us asked if we were astronomy majors or if we were first years, and also asked if we were part of their group of undergraduate students required to attend, which I did not realize that was something astronomy undergrads had to do. The seminar began when the professor introduced the graduate student, whose name was Mathieu Vrard from Paris, France. My first impressions from his presentations were not great, as he talked very quickly, quietly, and in a thick french accent, which made it very difficult to understand him. As the seminar went on, however, I felt like I was able to understand him better and better.

The seminar was interesting as it talked about new techniques and methods of determining the evolutionary states of Red Giant stars, which can be difficult as the evolution of the star depends on several factors. Mathieu had interned at an observatory in Paris and talked about how they compared and measured the pressure waves versus gravitational waves present in the star. By observing these types of seismological waves in the Red Giant stars, they discovered that the Red Giant star were special in that they had mixed modes, where the modes of the pressure waves and the modes of the gravitational waves can couple and become ‘mixed modes,’ but in main sequence stars, the frequencies of these oscillations are not similar. By measuring these mixed modes, they can put constraints on observing the Red Giant core structure. He then talked about 5 different methods in evaluating the mixed modes of Red Giants. The main differences in these methods were the amount of time to observe the stars (which was typically between 3 months to a year) and the accuracy and efficiency in determining the states of the stars. One of these methods were very interesting as it involved using artificial intelligence to look at thousands of stars and compare them, and then using a neural network, determine the state of a specific star.

This seminar intrigued me, even though when it first started I felt like I was not going to understand any of the content. I actually learned a lot from this seminar, not only about the actual content about stars, but also about how research in astronomy is conducted and presented. I think that as an undergraduate student, attending STEM seminars is a great way to get some experience in how STEM research works and also get connected to other people interested in the same subject. Going into the seminar I expected understand a little more than I actually did, but I was still able to learn a lot about the subject. Overall it was a good experience!