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This year has definitely been very interesting! I have learned a lot this year, both about material in my classes, and also about myself. It has been both challenging and rewarding, and I have definitely gotten a lot out of this year.

I would say that the class material that I have had this year that was the most impactful was definitely from my RA class (ESHESA 2576) and my ENR Seminar class. In my RA class, we have learned a lot about the different identities of people and how the way that someone identifies impacts their entire life. Everything from their gender to their race to their veteran status is part of who someone is, and makes them a whole person. It has also been very interesting being able to look at my own community through this lens, as well as looking at the different relationships between people in my community and how they all intertwine. In my Environment and Natural Resources class, we learned so many valuable things, but I think one of the most valuable discussions that we had was how social justice issues intertwine with environmental protections and policies. The conversation we had about the ability to separate someone’s successes in promoting environmental health while also being a detrimental person for black, native, and other minority communities impacted me greatly, and I constantly think about this topic and what it means for me as an environmental advocate. I always have to consider the intersectionality between racial justice and environmental justice.

Something that I learned outside of the classroom was to start putting myself first more often. Throughout this pandemic, everyone has had to sacrifice so much, and I know that a lot of people share the same feeling that it has beaten them down in a way. I had gotten to a place where when I was pushed against about most things, I would almost immediately give up on that fight. I think the pandemic reinforced the submissive part of my personality, and I think that it integrated itself into my educational and social life. I was letting people push me around and was totally accepting it. I learned that I have to stand up for myself, and that not everything is a pandemic that you don’t have control over.

My favorite memory from the past year was all the amazing weekends with my best friends. Spending time with people that I love spending time with was one of the only ways I got through this year in one piece. My absolute favorite experience was going to thrift stores and Target with some of my roommates!

What I am looking forward to most for next year is returning to semi-normal activities. I am encouraged by some of the recent messages from President Johnson of OSU that state that next year will be much more “normal” than this year. I am most excited by the idea that classes are going to be somewhat in-person, as it will really allow me to get to know my classmates in a way that I wasn’t able to this semester.

Overall, this year was super great and I can’t wait for my next one at OSU!!!

This month has been both really tough and really great. I think that the most interesting things that I have learned in class have been a product of taking my Resident Advisor Training Class (ESHESA 2576). In particular, we looked at something called an Identity Wheel, and how to understand how everyone else’s identities intertwine. One especially interesting aspect of this is determining which slices of the identity wheel you most relate to/identify with, and which ones you don’t consider to be a part of your primary identity. For me personally, I  really got to understand a lot about myself and what I think are the important aspects of my identity. I learned that I identify most with my political alignment, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and gender identity. On the other hand, I do not identify at all with any sort of Veteran Status, and only mildly with my socio-economic status, first language, nationality, and ethnicity. Something I have struggled with this month is pursuing my next step within my education and trying to set myself up for success. Over the past month or so, I have applied to my major as well as several internships for different engineering firms. It is stressful trying to plan for the rest of my academic career without knowing whether or not I am going to be able to pursue the major that I want to. In addition to this, I have gotten rejected from a really cool engineering research program that focused on prosthetic development, which is my dream research project. This was really tough for me, as I really wanted to put my foot in the door of this field. I have had to learn that it is okay to fail, especially when it is something so competitive. Something I achieved this month is getting started with my career as a Resident Advisor, and meeting lots of new people through the training class!

After graduation of undergraduate school, I am planning on applying to medical school, my dream school being University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. After I graduate from med school, there are several real-life job postings that I could apply for. These all include the process of matching with a surgical residency program. The job posting shown in the above screenshot is an application for a general surgery residency program at Atrium Health. The application process includes the submission of your common application form, completed curriculum, a personal statement, a medical school transcript, a Dean’s Letter, three letters of recommendation, a personal photo, and a medical licensing transcript. In addition to providing all of this documentation, an interview is conducted with about 8 percent of the applicants. This interview is 2 hours long, and determines whether or not you are accepted to the program. The selection for the interviews is based upon many factors, but focuses mostly on “educational achievement, communication skills, research experience, extracurricular activities, and intangible qualities.”

In the way of a job to-do list, there are several things that I need to accomplish during undergraduate and medical school in order to set me up for career success. Focusing on undergraduate however, I have found that this is the general yearly lay out for my to-do list:

1. Freshman Year
   1. Ensure that I am achieving highly in my academics
   2. Join any medical field-focused clubs that I find intriguing
   3. Meet with a pre-med advisor to ensure that I am following the right track towards graduate school
2. Sophomore Year
   1. Look to shadow a current physician/meet with physicians
   2. Find a clinical research opportunity
   3. Start preparing for the medical school application and the MCAT
3. Junior Year
   1. Study for the MCAT
   2. Take the MCAT sometime around May
   3. Research med schools and determine which ones I am planning to apply to
   4. Complete the primary medical school applications
4. Senior Year
   1. Complete secondary medical school applications
   2. Attend medical school interviews
   3. Plan out payment for med school

Before all of this however, I also need to ensure that I have taken all of the following classes:

1. Biology
2. Chemistry
3. Physics
4. Mathematics
5. Foreign Language
6. Medical Anthropology/History

My strategic plan for accomplishing everything on my to-do list is to ensure that I am consistently meeting with a pre-med advisor during undergrad and having them ensure that I am still on the right track for success in med school. I will also try to connect with as many existing physicians as possible in order to make connections early that will benefit me later.

 

 

This month, one of the most interesting things I learned about was conditional probability in Statistics. Essentially, this is the calculation of something happening given that another event has already occurred. The most interesting part of this was the topic’s intersection with engineering. There is a large portion of conditional probability that has to do with system failure vs system success, and is based on whether the system will function part by part based on how each individual part works. Something that I learned about myself is that I have a lot of available coping mechanisms for stress at my disposal, and that I should start using them! Recently, I looked into why I was feeling so distracted during my classes, and I realized that is helpful to do something with my hands while listening to lectures, so I bought a fidget cube. It was super interesting to see how such a small item could help improve my learning experience so drastically! Something I struggled with this month was feeling guilty for being excited to go back to school. I was so ready to return, and had to make sure I wasn’t making my family feel like I wanted to go back just to leave them behind. I also struggled with leaving my dogs in North Carolina! This month I achieved something that I never would have predicted. I started running in late November (right at Thanksgiving), and this month I completed my first 10K run. When I was much younger, I thought that the furthest I would ever be able to run was 2 miles, and I struggled to complete even one. I ran all 6.22 miles with my sister, and I felt super emotional afterwards because for me it was a giant accomplishment. Running has really helped me clear my mind recently, and also gives me small boosts of pride in myself after I conquer a new challenge.

 

My adaptation to college life was definitely a little bit strange both because of how far away from home I am at Ohio State, but also because of COVID 19. My transition was not everything that I had hoped it would be at first because so much of what I was going to experience felt so different than what I thought it was going to be. Move-in wasn’t a big celebration, and I didn’t get to freely explore my building and meet as many new people as I would have liked to. However, I formed an extremely tight bond with my roommates and the neighbors directly to our right, and it really helped ease the transition. I felt like I really found a new family in Ohio and within Ohio State, and is was super comforting to be surrounded by people that I love and that I know love me. I would say that that was also my favorite part about being an on-campus student at Ohio State, but my favorite part about college life in general would probably be the amount of freedom I got to experience. When you are in high school, you kind of fiend for any element of freedom, whether it be going to stay at a friend’s house or going on a drive to nowhere just to get out of your house. At Ohio State, this part of my life was extremely fulfilled, as I felt like I had a lot of freedom to just decide for myself what I wanted to do that day (and whether or not I wanted to sleep through my morning class). However, I also found college life to be extremely difficult when it came to time management. My parents never had to tell me to get my work done, but they always would check in and make sure I was relatively on track with my school work, and would always ask me if I had gotten everything done that I needed to before I went to bed. In college though, it was way too easy to just go to bed without being held accountable for getting the little things done everyday that eventually build up into hours of work. Something I achieved this semester was overcoming some of the extreme anxieties about school that I have had all my life. I constantly put too much pressure on myself to get everything done and to honestly overachieve at everything in my life. However, this semester, I learned that I don’t have to push myself quite so hard. It is important to try hard and do your best, but not when it is putting your mental health and wellbeing at risk. This semester, I learned to be a little more gentle with myself and be more understanding of my brain and what it needs. I didn’t push myself to stay up until 5 am and then wake up at 8 am to continue working. I let myself get the rest that I needed, which I find to be extremely important for my mental health. In the spring semester, I definitely want to continue to be understanding of my own needs, but I also want to get out there more and meet more people! Hopefully I have a chance to meet a bunch more people and get to know people in my classes better than I did this semester. I am also taking my first official engineering class next semester, as well as applying to my engineering specialty, so my goal is to set myself up so both of those things go well!

The alumni I chose to interview for this assignment was Hannah Myers! She is currently living in South Korea, but is job hunting for her future move to Anchorage, Alaska. She has held jobs all over the country, including Ohio, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma, specializing in Storm Water Quality Management. During her time in the Environment and Natural Resource Scholars program, she really enjoyed all of the different experiences that the program gave to her. Her favorite were the trips, especially the ones to Hocking Hills, white water rafting, and the alternate spring break trip to New Orleans. Hannah said that the most important thing that she learned from being an ENR Scholar was how important it is to build meaningful relationships with others, and says she wouldn’t have gotten her first paid internship position (which helped her post-graduation) without meeting the people in the ENR scholars program.

From my interview with Hannah, I learned that even though people say it a lot, procrastination really can be your downfall. She told me about how her procrastination habit really hurt her during her first quarter in college, and how she had to learn to schedule her time properly and learned that college assignments are really no joke! She also told me about how to take care of myself properly and emphasized that giving myself positive reinforcement can be extremely motivating when you are faced with a large bundle of schoolwork. The most important thing that I learned about from Hannah’s interview was about what it is like in the professional world, and what I should expect going into it. She really emphasized the importance of savings and how to set myself up for success financially, and ultimately be able to do the things that I want versus having to do things out of necessity only. Hannah loves to travel and said that being smart financially has allowed her to do a lot of it, which I hope that I can do someday. She also outlined how important it is to find internships that apply to my major, so that I can get relevant work experience and build important relationships that I can use to boost my success in the future.

After my interview with Hannah, I have started to think more about everything I can do to set myself up for future success. I plan on talking with my parents about my savings and what I can do to maximize the money that I can make aside from having a steady income. In addition to this, I am definitely going to start looking for engineering related internships, and hopefully will secure one for this summer! I really appreciated all the advice that Hannah gave me, and only wish I had more time and space to talk about everything she talked to me about!!

During the month of September, the most interesting thing that I learned about was the concept of friction and how it interacts with motion in my Physics class! I really enjoyed learning about this since I have always been interested in how things move and how different forces interact with one another, and friction is an extremely important concept for this topic. Something I have learned about myself during this month is that I am a lot more resilient and hardworking than I thought I was. Since I hadn’t been in school seriously for around six months, I thought that I would lose some of the motivation that I had maintained throughout high school, but this month has showed me that I still have the ability to work hard to achieve what I want. Something I struggled with through this month was balancing my school work with my social life, and trying to foster a good relationship with my roommates and the people that live on my floor while also completing all of my assignments and turning them in on time. I struggled to focus on my work and not get distracted by the things happening around me. Another thing that I struggled with was being away from home for a long time. I live about nine hours away, and have never been away from my family for longer than two weeks. I had to adjust to being by myself, but have been relatively successful so far! One thing I achieved however, is completing all of my schoolwork and turning it in on time. I have managed to keep track of my assignments during the entire month of September, and made sure that I did not make careless mistakes with my schedule that would have caused problems with my grades.

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