This semester I have focused a lot on building my network and making connections within the health field, which has lead me to make a LinkedIn page to better connect!
In addition, I have also gotten my first job in Columbus! I am excited to be working with Creative Living as a Residential Assistant in Columbus, and hope to use this opportunity further help those in my community.
I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to complete my first Buckeyethon in the spring semester before 2020, and it was a great experience. As I am originally from Philadelphia, I grew up seeing Penn State students come to school events and stand on roadsides collecting money for Thon, so I was very excited to join the event once I came to campus. Together with other active brothers in my service fraternity, we completed fundraisers and held a bake sale to raise money for children fighting pediatric cancer. By the dance marathon, I was able to raise 275 dollars to go toward research at Nationwide Childrens Hospital.
If I could pick one word to summarize this past semester, it would be routine. While the second semester online was not nearly as hectic as my first, I still had a long way to go before I could truly say I had mastered the art of zooming. This semester most of my classes were asynchronous, which meant that I was completely in charge of watching (or not watching) my lectures on time. As someone who has struggled with time management skills in the past, this was certainly a challenge for me, but one that I decided to meet head on. At the conclusion of this semester I can say that while I was not perfect, I am proud of the effort and self-discipline that I have shown in watching lectures and participating in class. This semester has also lead to a switch in my focus as a student and to greater understanding of the more complex topics of science. Midway through this semester I decided to switch my major from Biology to Medical Anthropology, which was nerve-wracking at first but will hopefully fit my goals better than my previous major. While I still enjoy biology immensely, I felt that Medical Anthropology also contained the more holistic and humanistic aspect that biology did not for me, so I hope to continue to focus more on understanding how humans work and how that influences health in the future.
This semester I also tried to focus more on maintaining my relationships with others and club status during the year, even if it was solely on zoom. I met with friends for socially distanced outdoor picnics, and attended virtual service events with the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity and worked on running blood drives with the Buckeye Blood Club. Hopefully as we continue into 2021 I am able to further those connections and get more involved with student organizations next semester.
After such a crazy semester, the biggest takeaway I can think of is to always be prepared for things to go wrong. It seems crazy to think that so much has changed over the course of just four months, but then again I don’t think anyone expected this semester to happen as it did. I have never learned online before, so logging into my first zoom class and taking an exam using lockdown browser was certainly an interesting experience. As much as I want to say I seamlessly transitioned from in person to online, there were plenty of bumps along the way. One thing I learned quickly is that sometimes failing, and failing on a grand scale at that, is a part of life and will often lead us to bigger and better successes. Switching from in person to online learning forced me to re-examine how I learned and studied, and has allowed me to form better study habits and appreciate office hours and lecture halls much more than before. On top of that, it has shown me that I am capable of rising to and meeting the challenges in front of me, whether they be academic, social, or mental. I hope to bring that mentality with me to future semesters, even when we are able to return to in person instruction.