Month: October 2019

Campus Resource

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There are a lot of resources on campus and even though the most used resources at the college are the academic resources, it’s important to acknowledge the non-academic campus resources. One key resources that I have relied on recently is OSU’s Student Health Center.

I have visited the Student Health Center, pictured above, two times so far this year. Once was for my vaccination document – I needed to turn in a physical document describing all the vaccines I had taken and that I was up to date on Ohio State’s vaccination requirements. The second time I went was for a more severe incident. While working on an assignment for a different class and casually talking with my friends at a table tennis table, I was hit with a heavy sided paddle straight to my forehead. I did not make much of the incident in that moment but by the shocked and horrified expressions on everyone else’s faces, I could tell something was wrong. I put my hand on the part of my head which, although was hurting everywhere, was hurting a little more than the rest of my head only to find a pool of blood completely covering my hand. I do not know if I was in shock at the moment, was being affected by the minor concussion I just received or if I generally thought it was funny that an incident like that led to such a big problem. All I know was that the horrified faces all around transitioned to sadness and worry as multiple people started yelling at me to go to the bathroom because at this point, blood was trailing down my face like water in a shower, and I was dripping it everywhere. It was at this moment that I should have called an ambulance or gone to urgent care. I was previously working on an assignment which was worth a lot of points and I knew that I could not afford to lose time on so when this unfortunate situation arose, I tried to get back to my studies. I put Neosporin on the wound followed by a bandaid in hopes that I could resume the work that I was so desperate to get done. I finished it a couple hours later, still somewhat in shock, and went to bed right after the assignment at 4 AM. I put an extra blanket under my pillow so as to alleviate the headaches that were caused. The following evening, I went to Ohio State’s Student Health Center and got help almost immediately. After talking with the doctor, he believed that I was in a terrible condition in multiple ways. Physically, I had just lost a lot of blood the day before and I knew that I was not feeling great at the moment because of it. He also let me know a myriad of things: I was in an unhealthy situation before the incident, it was too late for me to get stitches so I should have gone to urgent care, and that I may be suffering from headaches on the back of my head due to the stress that I put on myself due to my course load. I really loved being able to be more personal with the doctor here than I usually am at the hospital in my home town. He let me know that I was not eating enough, sleeping enough, drinking enough and was putting too much stress on myself with my work load. He proceeded to give me info on how to help with each of my problems and let me know that I could come back to see him again if I had any more problems. I even got my flu shot while I was there. The Student Health Center is undervalued resource among the students and I am very glad that I was able to talk to a professional who actually cared about my condition and followed through by checking up on me.

Stem Seminar Post

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I attended this seminar at the Chemistry and Bimolecular building shown above titled “Non-radiative Processes in Semiconductor Nano-crystals.” The majority of the people were older students, probably chemistry graduate students. Although I currently have very little motivation to become a chemistry student, one of my biggest considerations for choosing a major at The Ohio State University, and all the other colleges for which I applied, was to be a chemical engineer. I took introduction to chemistry in high school and loved it. Taking AP Chemistry, to further my fascination with chemistry, ruined my love for chemistry. It was a great subject with a lot of fascinating content but the rigorous workload and lack of effort from my teacher made me dislike it. In spite of my dislike of the class, I decided to invest some more time in the subject that blossomed my curiosity of the sciences. The seminar itself was a bit strange. For one, the man giving the seminar spoke a bit faster than I would have preferred. This quick-speaking was a real problem as it was coupled with the fact that most of his vernacular was that of a Chemistry graduate student and a lot of it went over my head. This seemed like a seminar for graduate students and students who have a moderate understanding of complex chemistry. The seminar presenter explained that they took silicon solid structures and they cut them to nano meter scale. From there, they measured conical intersections. At this point, the rest of the seminar went above my head. My friend explained to me that they determined electron level excitation in order to determine what emission of light would be possible dependent upon the input of voltage. The seminar speaker then talked about some impurities that could have skewed the data. He then talked about some materials that would not be good for use in modern phones as they only allowed emissions of the two lowest electron level excitation. He provided a lot of information and used graphics to back it up and a lot of it actually made sense to me, even if it was to a very minimal degree. Overall, I really enjoyed the seminar. It was a lot of fun to sit and just listen to someone talk about something they are really passionate about and it made me enjoy it a lot. It was more enjoyable to my friend who is a chemistry major and understood a lot more of it than I did but the experience was one that was definitely worth going through. I’m proud that The Ohio State University provides a lot of options and events for what to do and how to experience things that one may not normally experience when focused on one major or one career path. It enables one to think about things differently than one would normally while also allowing each person’s strengths to shine. The seminar was more enjoyable to my friend than it was to me because it made more sense to him than it did for me but I got to go through the mindset of a professional chemist.