Spring Project

For my spring project, I will be getting certified and learning hubspot. This is something that will be incredibly helpful for my career since it is a useful tool for customer relationship management.

Diversity Post

The thing I attended for this diversity post was the Schottenstein Chabad House. This house is owned and kept up by the Rabbis and their families. The organization is Chabad. The main event I attend is the weekly shabbat dinner. I go with some of my friends, and we sometimes also bring our non-jewish friends. Overall, this is one event I look forward to every week. My family growing up was not super religious. We celebrated the main jewish holidays but we almost never went to services or anything. Joining chased has allowed me to really get more exposed to Judaism and different types of traditions. When I first attended this event, I felt very uncomfortable. I felt like I didn’t belong. Pretty much the entire first dinner I went to I just felt like an outsider. But, as I started going to more of the dinners, I started to meet more people and understand the traditions. I learned the rules and started to help out there. I think that the fact that I felt uncomfortable was mostly just because I felt out of place. But, I have brought several of my non-jewish friends who absolutely loved going. We get a 4 course meal, sing songs, and get lots and lots of challah. The whole experience is very comfortable. I think that Rabbi Zalman, who is in charge, does a great job of making sure people that aren’t jewish feel included. Every time I have brought someone to Chabad, he welcomed them, talked to them, and introduced them to people so they didn’t feel out of place. A big thing in Judaism is the idea of family. Whether you are friends, acquaintances, or actually related, being a part of a large group of people who you care about and treating them the way you want to be treated is so important. In fact, for my birthday this past weekend, they brought me a cake. When I asked the Rabbi why they would spend money on a cake for me when they barely know me, he said that “We don’t need to be related to be family. You come here all the time and participate respectfully. You treat my family with kindness. Chabad is a family. We care about each other, celebrate each other, and are there for each other. You are family”. It is something that really warmed my heart. I think that diversity effects STEM a lot. As you look deeper and deeper into people of color or of different religions in STEM, the numbers get smaller and smaller. I did robotics all of high school. Our team had 40+ members. I was one of two girls on the team. Honestly, it was really hard. The guys would team up against us and make it hard for our ideas to be heard. I ended up becoming very inactive my senior year because of how toxic the team became. Overall, my experience with Chabad, which was something very different than what I grew up with, was really incredible. Every time I go there I learn something new.

 

Here is a video from one of the dinners:

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Campus Resource Overview

The camnpus resource I went to was the Student Health Center. I actually found out about the student health center from one of my friends who had a check-up appointment there. Unfortunately, a few weeks into the semester, I (along with many students) got very sick. At first I thought it was a cold, so I went in and they checked me out and gave me a strep test, and sent me on my way. I was supposed to come back if the symptoms didn’t go away. Unfortunately, I had to go back. It seemed that I had a sinus infection, so they gave me antibiotics. I am allergic to most antibiotics, and I have a list of ones I can take. The one they prescribed me was on my “okay to take” like, but unfortunately I had an allergic reaction from it and had to stop. I ended up going back and they prescribed me some other type of medicine, which ultimately helped me get better. Unfortunately, this whole process lasted about 3-4 weeks. For all of the times I went to the student health center I made an appointment. The first time was a walk-in, and the second and other time I used BuckMD to make the appointment. For every single time I went there, there was an incredibly long wait. I had to block out at least an hour and a half for each appointment since the wait time for everything was so long. I had hoped that the student health center would be a high priority of the Ohio State University, since they have such a well developed medical program. I had hoped that it would be very hard to get anything done there. Unfortunately that is not the case. The student health center is not the best, in my opinion. The first time I went, the nurse who was inputting my information barely spoke English, so it took an incredibly long time for me to explain what I was allergic to, and different medical conditions I have. She didn’t understand most of what I was saying and I had to draw pictures and google definitions for her. It was incredibly frustrating since I had expected it to be better. Even the scheduling process for walk-ins is terrible. The front desk people are very rude. I had asked them questions about how to schedule an appointment, etc, and they just overall were not nice at all. Scheduling a walk-in took 30-40 min of wait time. I am not sure why they don’t have a better system. If there are 15 people waiting to schedule an appointment and it takes a while to schedule, why would they only have one person working? Even when I was at my appointment I had to wait an hour. In addition to that they brought me back and started my appointment, then made me go wait for another 30 minutes because they “forgot” there was another appointment. I had hoped that the student health center would be a good place to go if I was sick or if I needed help with some medical conditions, but honestly I had more success doing the Cleveland Clinic virtual visit. I would not recommend the student health center. It was a giant waste of time and was not worth the wait.

Campus Seminar

For my campus seminar visit, I went to an Adobe XD seminar. Although I had used different Adobe products in the past, this one was very different. Adobe XD is used in prototyping apps. Although this was part of the required seminar assignment, I really enjoyed going. When I was required to visit a non-academic campus resource, I was really nervous as to how it would go. I ended up going alone, but I didn’t mind it. I was able to meet lots of new people, and I was able to learn a lot. When I first was looking through different seminars I could go to, I discovered so many new things I can do on campus. I had no idea there were so many seminars going on. Even though the Fisher College Of Business isn’t completely STEM related, I found so many interesting topics they have seminars on. For this Adobe XD seminar, I was able to sign up online. The seminar was actually part of an entire app development competition through Adobe x IBM. The sign up was simple and it was at a very convenient time. Fortunately, not that many people signed up so there was no wait. There were actually lots of seats open. The seminar was actually live-streamed from the Adobe offices with one of their employees talking. 33 colleges from the United States participated in the seminar and the competition. Going into this, I was expecting something very different then what happened. The entire event in general was very unorganized, but the actual Adobe XD app was a mess. Their main selling point (during the competition) was the fact that there was a “sharing” feature where multiple people can work on one document. The “sharing” feature ended up causing lots of issues, and made it a lot harder to learn about the actual app since we were constantly trying to problem solve the sharing. By the end of each day, the app just entirely stopped working for me. The Adobe ambassadors didn’t even know what to do. Overall, I am glad I went, but it was not at all what I expected. There are many potential areas of growth for this event. First of all, they advertised that they were able to book a speaker for the event that has worked with many big companies and celebrities. This “speaker” was someone who FaceTimed on of the guys in charge, and we all crowded around his computer to talk to her for 15 min. This was incredibly disappointing since almost everyone thought we would actually get to meet her and network. The entire event in general was very poorly organized. They advertised networking opportunities through the competition, as well as prizes for us, but in the end the prizes were national, not just within OSU, and there were no networking opportunities. I feel like OSU is missing a support service for more basic concepts. A lot of these seminars are for students who have been through more schooling. So most of these seminars would go right over most people’s heads.

Academic Support

For me, academic support is something I am very familiar with. Ever since I got concussions in middle school, I have had a very hard time learning. Academic support has been one way I have been able to manage my classes, and learn in a one-on-one environment. Personally, math has always been a subject I struggle with the most. I have had at least 4 different personal math tutors since 7th grade, and have always gone to office hours and tutoring while I took my College Credit Plus classes. My time going to the math tutoring center in Cockins Hall, is one I am very familiar with. Since the year has started, I have gone there at least 2 times a week for help with making sure I understand the material I am learning. While I was there, the tutors either wrote on a separate piece of paper to outline an example problem, or they wrote on the chalk boards. I have had bad experiences there, but mostly just with individual tutors. Last week when I went with one of my friends, a tutor just didn’t feel like helping us with the problem, and they just left us. I have only ever had 2 bad tutors there, but for the most part they are really helpful. I have begun telling my friends about going there too. Midterms were very rough for everyone, so being able to go there and get the help you need–for free–is really incredible. Overall, I find tutoring extremely valuable to my success in school.

Student Organization

The student organization I have so far really enjoyed is going to the OSU Chabad. I didn’t make it to the first meeting, but my friend ended up dragging me to the second event. The Chabad is a very conservative Jewish organization on campus. Although I don’t identify as conservative, or very religious at all, I really enjoy the programming. Everyone there is incredibly welcoming, and they never fail to make each member feel at home. And as a very nice bonus, they have Friday night dinners. So my friends and I go on Fridays to get nice programming and a delicious home cooked meal.