One of my mentees is Sydney Klein and she is an Early Childhood Major who is thinking of switching to Middle Childhood Education. I asked her the following questions among many others when our conversation started going and we felt more comfortable with each other:

1. How did you decide on the major you have chosen?
2. What has been your most challenging class so far and why?
3. Why did you choose ACES?
4. What are you most looking forward to in the ACES program?
5. What is your dream job and why?

Sydney has thought about teaching third grade but since coming to Ohio State, she has thought more about wanting to teach middle childhood. Her long term goal is to become a guidance counselor or principal because she loves kids and helping people. She feels if she becomes a guidance counselor or principal it will be more rewarding work for her and that she will have a larger effect on students. She chose ACES because it relates to her major and interests. She knew it involved service and that it is education based. Some challenges that she is a little worried about are getting all of her service hours and events completed but she is looking forward to all of the service opportunities and events that our Scholars group has to offer.

Sydney has become well acclimated to college life so far and she is loving Ohio State. She liked to study at the 18th Avenue Library and prefers to study in a library setting versus her room or residence hall. She was worried that since Ohio State is such a large campus that she would have a hard time finding her place, but she said she quickly found ways to make it feel smaller. She is grateful for the friends she has made already and she has even joined an a capella group.

Sydney is a little worried about her one class, School and Society. Although she finds it interesting, the instructor assigns a lot of assignments that are often due every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She feels that she will need to work on her time management so that she has time to do school work but to also have a social life and hang out with friends. In high school, she was very used to overloading herself with work and she wants to break that streak in college.

My next mentee is Sam Weiss. He is currently Undecided but he has some interest in Early Childhood Education. I asked Sam many questions including the following:

1. How do you like to study? Have you found a good place for studying on campus?
2. What has been your most challenging class so far and why?
3. Why did you choose ACES?
4. How will you balance academics and involvement?
5. What are you most looking forward to in the ACES program?

Sam decided to come into Ohio State without picking a major because he wasn’t ready to narrow it down to just one. He is thinking about education but is worried he might change his mind; this would be difficult because education is a competitive major and there is not a lot of flexibility. His most challenging class is Math 1125. He hasn’t really studied for it and it has been hard for him to grasp the basic concepts of the class. He also isn’t very motivated in the class because he feel sit won’t apply if he doesn’t become an Early Childhood Major. He has also expressed interesting in English, History, and Social Work. He prefers to study in his room because he often gets distracted if he tries to go to the library.

Sam chose ACES because he likes to work with kids. He tutors every week and likes to be involved with service and in his community. He tutors at GEM Elementary School three times a week. He is looking forward to the service events and group activities of ACES and to continue meeting new people through the program.

I asked Sam what he has learned so far at Ohio State and what he has been surprised about. He learned that 8am classes are harder than he thought they would be. He has also been overextending himself with school work and volunteer work. He also does not like his classes as much as he hoped he would and he is more busy than he prefers. Overall, Sam feels like he will need to improve his time management and he continues on with this semester.

For my Child Development class, I had to observe for 8 hours at the Schoenbaum Family Center. The facility has an observation deck where you can observe either toddlers or preschoolers. I had to make five observations each hour and then relate them to what I learned in class about how children develop and the different milestones they reach. This was one of my favorite projects of the year because I liked seeing how children act at different ages and how they interact with each other.

Although this project was meant for learning about the different stages of development, I also learned how to manage my time. I learned that in order to create thorough and accurate work, I had to set goals and manage my time more than I was used to doing in the past. I had to plan out when I had time throughout my school day to go the center and how soon I wanted to complete the project before the deadline. Setting goals for myself was one thing but it was another thing to actually follow through. I learned that I am most successful when I set goals and follow through.

This project made me more excited to work with kids. It was interesting to be able to watch the children but the whole time I was there I wanted to be in the classroom interacting with them.

For our ACES Seminar we worked in groups and gave presentations on various documentaries we watched and then related it to the 4 Pillars of ACES: Positive Social Change, Advocacy, Community, and Service. My group studied the film called Race to Nowhere. It was about the stress that present day students are under with the excessive amount of homework and expectations they are given to get into a good college and to get good grades. My group had a hard time relating the film to the pillars because it was more about just spreading awareness of the current problem. The filmmaker was a mother herself and thought about the stress that her own children were going through and wanted more parents to be aware of it too. The film called for decreasing the amount of homework that is given to students and to not shine as much emphasis on grades and instead more on learning.

Through this project I learned more about how to work with a group and how to look for and incorporate the ACES Pillars into my everyday life. My group and I shared a common goal of wanted to complete the task at hand on time but we also wanted the project to be meaningful to us and to the people we were sharing the film with. Although many of us did not enjoy the film, we understood the importance of the message it conveyed. Having to look for the pillars in the film made me think about how I can find and strive for them daily.