STEP Project Reflection

For my STEP signature project I did a summer internship. I worked as a Mechanical Engineering Intern at ITW Shakeproof in the Chicago area. My main role was to work on a project designing and making a prototype of a machine. I used 3D modeling, machining, and programming.

I learned a lot during my project both technically and about myself. On the technical side I learned about the manufacturing world and about the process of a design project. I had not worked in manufacturing before so it was very insightful. I learned a lot about my preferences and how I work. I was working alone a lot of the time and that was kind of hard because I like to have people to bounce ideas off of and to be affirmed through the process. I think it also makes it more fun and interesting interacting with other people and hearing their ideas.

I lived with roommates that I didn’t know before and ended up having a great time. I learned that I really value relationships and like living with people rather than on my own. I also learned how to set my own schedule in terms of post-school life. I was able to create a balance of work, exercise, making food, relaxing by myself, and hanging out with friends.

I learned a lot of the technical things at work from my manager. He took time to take me around the plant and explain everything that happens even though it wasn’t something I needed to directly know. I appreciated that because it helped me understand the company more and how what I was doing would impact the process overall. My manager also gave me the opportunity to do header training which is how to use one of the machines in screw making. Even though I was not doing that job, I really appreciated the insight to how it works and knowing what other people in the plant do.

During my internship there were events for the interns both for fun and for career development. One of the events we did a DiSC assessment which is about workplace preferences and priorities and how you connect best with colleagues. The four categories are dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. I learned that I fall in the SC style which is steadiness and conscientiousness. I like clear set expectations and I like following procedures. Knowing these and the other things that the assessment showed will help me in my future work places and in relationships in general.

Living with the roommates I had this summer was an amazing experience.  I was a little nervous living with people I had never met before but it ended up being a huge blessing. My roommates were also interns at ITW but for a different division. I appreciated having people to hang out with after work and to go places with on the weekend. Being in a new city where I didn’t know anyone, it was really nice having people to do things with. I also met other people through them because there were more interns at their office than at mine so I met those other interns through them. This opens up my opportunities of where I might work in the future because I am less nervous about living somewhere away from my current friends and my family.

These thing that I have learned will help me be a better employee and friend. I know more about manufacturing so if I would go into that I have experience. I also know the manufacturing side wasn’t my favorite because I got to experience it so I can look for opportunities in different business sectors. Knowing more about myself and how I work and relate to others will help me understand the roles I tend to take and use those to my advantage and I also know what areas I can grow more in. Learning how to love more independently was a great experience and a peek into what post-graduation life will be like. I learned so much from all aspects of my project and I am so grateful for the amazing experience.

 

Professional Interview

My major, biomedical engineering, is a newer and up in coming field. I get asked quite a bit what exactly it is and what I want to do with it. I myself and not entirely sure which makes it hard to answer this question. In the intro to BME class I took this fall, we learned about the various domains of BME. One that particularly interested me was the biomechanics domain. To learn about it I talked to Dr. Reilly who teaches some biomechanics courses and does research in biomechanics.

Dr. Reilly broke down biomechanics in a simple way stating that it is a quantitative and qualitative way to describe the deformation and flow of cells, tissues, organs, and the whole body by applying laws of mechanics. It also gets down to the reactions of macromolecules like proteins that lead to the larger movement of our body parts. Our body movements can be modeled by algebraic equations. One application is gait analysis which is predicting the probability of injury by how they walk. This also applies to running, jumping, and is mainly used in sports mechanics and injury. Biomechanics also deals with opthamology, orthopedics, the cardiovascular system, the musculoskeletal system, and many more. Biomechanics can be looked at on a small scale with cells and how they move and change in response to stimuli.

Dr. Reilly also talked about his own research. He looks at ocular trauma and the mechanisms of injury. He recreates mechanisms of injury to study what effects they have on the eye. Presbyopia and cataracts are also studied in his lab to try to find a cure by looking at the mechanics of their formation.

I was very grateful to have the opportunity to talk to Dr. Reilly and learn more about biomechanics. After talking to him, my interest in biomechanis has grown and I look forward to taking classes that are specialized in that area.

My Capstone

For my capstone, I have decided to work with children and bringing STEM learning to their classroom and community. I have always loved working with children and teaching them as proven through my work at Columbus’ outdoor education summer camps and my job as a nanny. Coming to OSU, I continued that passion by volunteering with different organizations like WOW and Stem Outreach that bring STEM into the classroom. I will be continuing my volunteer work and observing the impact stem education brings to the children. I want to see how their interest level is around the activities I do with them and how it changes their outlook on what they are capable of doing.

Scholars Reflection

I am a part of the STEM EE scholars group. I have had a great time in scholars this year. At first when I heard all the requirements, I was a little nervous about how I would accomplish everything while doing all my school work, but now I am really glad we had those requirements put in place. Some of the requirements were to go to STEM EE events, stem events, and participate in a long term activity. These requirements were an invitation to get involved. No one really needs an invitation to be involved around campus, but sometimes, especially as a freshman, things can be intimidating and people may not know how to get involved. The long term activity helped reinforce the importance of commitment with the fact that we had to go to multiple events of a club or activity.

The most important thing I think I have gained from scholars is friendship. I love that the scholars groups live together in the dorms. I have talked to people not in honors and scholars and some of them say it is hard to get to know people in the dorms. Because we already had something in common, and we had the seminar class with each other, we felt more of a connection and have really become friends with other people in the scholars group and in our dorm. In STEM EE although we are not the same majors, a lot of us take the same classes. That is nice because sometimes we can just go down the hall and knock on each other’s doors if we need help on something.

My scholars experience so far has been great. I am excited to continue being a part of scholars in the years to come and I know the friendships I have made will last a lifetime.

GOALS Reflection

Thinking about the future can be scary. No one knows that will happen and the unknown is agonizing. However, having goals gives direction and a purpose which makes everything a little less terrifying. The GOALS of honors and scholars are a good place to start when thinking of what you want to do in your life because together they help make a well-rounded person. I have been thinking of the GOALS and how I will use them in my future. Combining them with my personal goals, global awareness and service outreach speak to me the most in regards to my future.

Global awareness is one of the GOALS elements I see being in my life in the future. I have already started planning on making it a part of my future. Because I am minoring in French, I want to study abroad in France to immerse myself in the culture and the language. I think it is important to understand other perspectives and backgrounds. In the more distant future I still plan to incorporate global awareness in my life. In the engineering field, there is a possibility of working with people from all around the world and people in different life situations. With these experiences, I hope to learn how to be more aware of others and their situations even if I can’t fully understand them.

Service outreach has always been a part of my life. Since the summer after seventh grade, I spent multiple weeks of my summer volunteering for a summer camp in my community. I want to continue this level of service in my future. Service not only benefits the people being served, but also who is helping. It gives me a sense of accomplishment as well as unity with whomever I am serving. I know in my future I will be busy, but giving my time to serve others is the most generous thing I can do. There are many organizations I can get involved with even after college to help others. I can even combine my future work with service because there are many less fortunate people who can benefit from engineers doing things like creating a way for them to get clean water.

Even in STEM fields which are known to be more about numbers and facts, understanding other people and what they need is very important. Global awareness and community service could even come hand in hand if I chose to do service in an area that is not my own community. This could be somewhere internationally, or just somewhere not too far but where the living is very different. I did a service trip like this in the very poor Appalachian community which was only a few hours away, but the living was so different to what I am used to and made me aware of how life is for others. I want to keep doing these things to improve myself as a person while trying to do my part in bettering the world. The GOALS are a great way to be well rounded, so I hope to continue fulfilling all of them even though global awareness and service outreach feel like they speak to me the most.

One of the organizations I am involved in is Biomedical Engineering Society. They put on a lot of great events surrounding the biomedical engineering field.  I have been to events where they brought in graduated biomedical engineering students to talk about where they work and what they do. Another interesting event they held was a research panel where professors  who do research related to the biomedical field came in and talked about it. That event was a good way to figure out if I want to do research and if so, what kind. I like this club because it is very helpful in bringing help and information to its members. A helpful meeting they held was a resume review and practice for talking to companies before the career fair.

A different part of the club I am involved in is a mentorship group. The groups consist of five or six people and one of the members is the mentor. The mentors are upperclassmen already accepted into the BME major. This is my favorite aspect of the club because it is a more personal experience. The mentors can give us advice because they have been through the same classes as us mentees. It is also a good way to meet other people in the same major even in the same grade because they are the other mentees. Along with attending the usual BMES meetings, there are fun challenges the groups can do. Recently, my group went to COSI (pictured above) when it was open late on Friday for OSU students. We had a lot of fun getting to know each other and experiencing a cool place at the same time. Because it was the first time most of us had gotten together, I made a few great new friends. We realized we even have classes together which was amazing. Seeing those connections makes this large campus seem a little smaller.

Interview Project

A big part of being successful in anything is getting to know others. You never know when a relationship can lead you to a job, a great research position, or a supportive mentor. As I approach my third month in college, I know it is difficult and very different than high school. To get advice, I interviewed three people: a professor, a graduate student, and an upperclassman. To begin, I had to find and decide who I was going to interview. The upperclassman was not hard to find because she is one of my RA’s. Her name is Brielle Davidson and she is a third-year undergraduate student. For my graduate student interview, I knew my chemistry TA, Justin Thomas, was a graduate student. I met with him at his office hours which was convenient for both of us. The professor was the hardest to find. I used Scopus to look at scientific journals which I found interesting, but when I emailed the professors, none of them responded. However, a club I’m in was having a meeting where professors talked about their research. I went there and talked to professor Kai Zhao after the meeting was over and set up a meeting that way.

In addition, I had specific purposes for interviewing each person I did end up talking to. Brielle is always welcoming and friendly which makes her a great RA and someone I was comfortable talking to. She is majoring in biology which means she has already taken many of the classes I have to take as a biomedical engineering major. My chemistry TA is an international student from India. I wanted to hear more about college in another country which was a big factor in why I interviewed Justin. I also have to take a lot of chemistry for my major so I wanted to hear about it from someone who enjoys chemistry so much to go to grad school for it. I decided to talk to professor Zhao because of the research he does. I think his research about nasal passageways are very interesting. I have never thought about it much, but reading about the different things that can go wrong with nasal passageways and how to fix them really caught my attention.

First, I got a lot of great advice from my RA and upperclassman, Brielle. She gave me tips of what to do if I get overwhelmed from my classes or I am not doing well and getting frustrated. She said sometimes it is best to just stop and take a break from that subject for a short time to calm yourself down. Brielle also said that you have to learn to be okay with your best effort and not beat yourself up if after that you are still not perfect at the subject. I learned that it is okay to retake a class, especially if you are really passionate about the subject and want to get a better grade to make sure you have a firm understanding of it. Brielle also told me about a great class to take for a literature general education course. As far as clubs go, she said most of the clubs she is involved in she heard about from friends. I had a great experience interviewing Brielle, making me less nervous to interview my TA and a professor.

Next, I learned a lot of new things about my TA and got more advice from him. Justin is an international student from India where he did his undergraduate studies. He was very involved in research as an undergraduate student and recommends it because research can help find interests. Justin did research in multiple labs before finding physical chemistry is what he likes best. To get to know professors, Justin’s advice was to ask questions and try to get involved with their research. He came to Ohio State University because he talked to professors at his undergraduate school. As far as studying goes, Justin said he likes to study in groups because discussing the topics with other student was a great way to understand it better and test how much he knows. I never knew Justin had done so much research and I am glad I had the opportunity to get a lot of advice about it.

Until now, I had never read a scholarly article of my own. The first article I read by Kai Zhao was about nasal flow passages which was being researched to find a way to model airflow in the passages under different breathing conditions to compute airflow and pressure. A model was found that was like the experimental results. The other article was about how different odors travel through the nasal cavities and create a pattern across the olfactory epithelium which tells us what we are smelling. The goal was to model the air flow of various odorants and they found perception of odor is depends on the cavity. I found the articles were not as hard to understand as I thought. The most difficult part was the word choice. I think reading scholarly articles is important for engineers to use researched information in the products they design.

Last, I had to interview professor Kai Zhao. Once he started talking about his research, I could really tell he loved what he was doing. That taught me to make sure I end up doing work I am passionate about because that makes a difference in the quality of the work you do. I also learned that professors are not intimidating and they want to share their work with other. Professor Zhao talked about the student working in his lab and praised how amazing they are making me realize that professors are very willing and want to have students working with them. We both find how the body works very fascinating which was another reason I liked hearing Professor Zhao talk about his research.

In short, I got a lot of great advice from all three individuals I interviewed. When I first heard about this project, I was dreading talking to a graduate student and a professor. Now that I have done it, I realize taking to them was not as intimidating as I thought. Going forth, I will be more confident it talking to those higher up than I. With all the great comments about research, I am considering doing research sometime in my undergraduate career. This project was an overall great experience that rewarded me with lifelong advice for stepping out of my shell.

Year in Review

I cannot believe how fast this year has gone by. Freshman year is less than a week away from being over and it feels like it just started. In what has felt like a short amount of time, I have undergone some changes. I can see the difference from first semester to second semester that I figured out how to study. Although that may seem easy, studying in college is a lot different than in high school. My favorite study spot is in the Grand Reading Room in Thompson. It is quiet so I can concentrate, but I do not get distracted like I can on my own because I am motivated by all the hardworking people around me.

I have also made many new friends this year. Some of my friends I made through my scholars group. It is nice that we live together so we can just go knock on each other’s doors if we want someone to talk to or help on homework. Next year, I am going to miss just being a few steps away from the friends I made. I also made new friends through church at the St. Thomas Moore Newman Center and the Catholic organization St. Paul’s Outreach. It is nice to know people that hold my same values. A few other friends I have met in classes.

It is amazing how different the second semester feels from the first. One reason is because the activities in the fall like the football games are not in the spring. I also think weather plays a lot with people’s moods. The spring semester seemed to go by even faster than the fall even though there were less breaks. It is weird having a whole different schedule the second semester because it changes a lot in terms of when you do things and if times align with friends to get together.

I am very happy with how my first year at Ohio State went. There are so many opportunities here that I have found out about that I will definitely try to get involved with next year or stay involved with. Staring something new is always hard at first like finding the way around or figuring out how to study, but now that I have the hang of it, I know next year is going to be great.

 

 

G.O.A.L.S.

[ “G.O.A.L.S.” is a place where students write about how their planned, current, and future activities may fit into the Honors & Scholars G.O.A.L.S.: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement. For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.

Global Awareness: Students cultivate and develop their appreciation for diversity and each individual’s unique differences. For example, consider course work, study abroad, involvement in cultural organizations or activities, etc .
Original Inquiry: Honors & Scholars students understand the research process by engaging in experiences ranging from in-class scholarly endeavors to creative inquiry projects to independent experiences with top researchers across campus and in the global community. For example, consider research, creative productions or performances, advanced course work, etc.
Academic Enrichment: Honors & Scholars students pursue academic excellence through rigorous curricular experiences beyond the university norm both in and out of the classroom.
Leadership Development: Honors & Scholars students develop leadership skills that can be demonstrated in the classroom, in the community, in their co-curricular activities, and in their future roles in society.
Service Engagement: Honors & Scholars students commit to service to the community.]