Sophomore Year in Review

Global Awareness: There are over 7 billion people on this earth, but how much do I really know about them? Over the course of completing my undergraduate degree at Ohio State, I hope to be able to answer that question very differently than I could my freshman year. Growing up in a suburb of Columbus, my experience with diversity was limited to the people I interacted with at school and around town. Granted, there were several different cultures and ethnic groups present, but I never had the chance to travel beyond North America until I reached college. As a member of the marching band, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to London and tour there. This was a very short trip to a city with quite a few similarities to Columbus, but it still sparked a strong interest in study abroad programs that will allow me to learn about places around the globe. I took a course in Cultural Anthropology that exposed me to various cultural norms and how they’ve developed. I also took another anthropology class on women’s global health that expanded my understanding of how different cultures treat women and the various challenges this population faces around the world. If it fits in my schedule, I would ideally like to spend at least a week in a different country to personally see how people outside the United States live and how their values differ from ours, not just learn about it in class. Ultimately, Ohio State has a diverse population and wide variety of opportunities that encourage global awareness; all I have to do is take advantage of them.

Original Inquiry: Ever since I learned Ohio State is one of the top research universities in the country, I have had a strong interest in engaging in research. From reading about all the various studies taking place, the ones in the realm of psychology appeal to me most, both because that’s my major and because I enjoy learning more about why people act the way they do. I have taken Research Methods and Data Analysis through the psychology department and am currently enrolled in the second level statistics class for my major. I am applying principles from all three of these courses as I participate in undergraduate research. As someone with an interest in Educational Psychology, I am particularly interested in the studies on childhood development and other similar topics. I have been fortunate enough to be a research assistant in the Cognitive Development Lab since the summer after my freshman year. Last October, I was accepted to become a member of the Honors Psychology Research Mentorship Program that requires me to complete a research thesis by the end of my junior year. I am testing adults in their ability to categorize based on fraction rules and comparing their performance to that of elementary students to help me understand how children learn fractions best, whether it’s with the presentation of visually-interesting stimuli or simple, straight-forward symbols. Once this project is completed by Spring 2018, I will continue my work in the Cognitive Development Lab until I graduate in the spring of 2019, pursuing other interesting research questions and increasing the literature available on child development. This will prepare me for my future career of being a child advocate where I will potentially utilize applied behavior analysis, which is based on data interpretation, and conduct further research to best help schools reach all students enrolled.

Academic Enrichment: Looking over my honors contract, I can say I’m definitely taking a rigorous course load that will challenge me intellectually. As of now, I will graduate with 166 credit hours. I have chosen to major in psychology with two minors in education and disability studies because I would ideally like to go to graduate school to earn a degree in educational psychology so I can work in schools, but not in the traditional way of teaching. I’m most excited about taking an Introduction to American Sign Language course through speech and hearing sciences for one of my minors because I have always thought it’s a beautiful language. After my exposure to it in elementary school from a deaf student in one of my classes, I have enjoyed using the minimal amount I know. Also, I am currently taking a class on exceptional children which is giving me an extraordinary amount of insight into myself, as a gifted individual, and into the types of students I hope to work with one day. These classes will greatly enhance my career preparation and are topics many people don’t get the opportunity to explore. In addition, I’m planning to continue taking marching band, which is a course that not only challenges my brain with music in ways that regular academics can’t, it has also taught me a lot about personal responsibility and I think it takes my college career beyond the minimum requirements.

Leadership Development: As I’ve mentioned previously, I am a second-year member of the Ohio State University Marching Band and it is an organization that has already given me leadership opportunities I never expected. When in uniform, it is easy to identify me as a member of a key campus group and people have respect for us. I feel it’s necessary to behave exceptionally well to properly represent the band and in simple things, such as not jaywalking on campus, people follow my lead and don’t walk across the street when they see me waiting for the proper time. Simple things like this remind me that certain titles come with natural leadership opportunities that shouldn’t be wasted. In addition, I have been nominated for squad leader the past two years, which is incredibly rare for someone this young. I have since been named Assistant Squad Leader in E Row for my upcoming third year in band, which will put me in charge of twelve other members who will look to me for help with marching, music, and judging them during tryouts. My squad leaders my first two years set an excellent example for me to follow and I wish to be just as conscientious and approachable as they were. Finally, I was a member of the Student Advisory Council for the marching band my second year. This group is comprised of students in the band who are first-fifth year members. We act as liaisons between the other band members and staff, assisting in areas like communication, trip planning, and peer support. This position allowed me to have several chances to address the band, gaining visibility within the organization, which meant I was inclined to set an even better example than before. I am eager to see what other leadership opportunities my third and fourth years on campus bring, whether they be in band or not.

Service Engagement: As someone who logged nearly 1000 service hours in high school, service has always been a big passion of mine. To fulfill the First Year Experience requirement for my survey class, I attended a session on service and it exposed me to the vast number of service organizations on campus. BuckeyeThon hasn’t fit with my schedule the past two years unfortunately, but I have donated to the cause and I really hope I can participate as a dancer in future years. Also, things like Community Commitment are a great way to give back to the surrounding areas. Finally, as I am from Hilliard which is just twenty minutes away from campus, I sometimes take the chance to go home and play in our church orchestra or assist in teaching a Sunday School class for elementary students, giving back to the community that did so much for me growing up. Ultimately, this university has no limit of ways to give back, one just has to look for them and I can’t wait to see the difference I can continue to make on this campus and beyond in the next couple years.

G.O.A.L.S.

Global Awareness: There are over 7 billion people on this earth, but how much do I really know about them? Over the course of completing my undergraduate degree at Ohio State, I hope to be able to answer that question very differently than I could my freshman year. Growing up in a suburb of Columbus, my experience with diversity was limited to the people I interacted with at school and around town. Granted, there were several different cultures and ethnic groups present, but I never had the chance to travel beyond North America until I reached college. As a member of the marching band, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to London and tour there. This was a very short trip to a city with quite a few similarities to Columbus, but it still sparked a strong interest in study abroad programs that will allow me to learn about places around the globe. I took a course in Cultural Anthropology that exposed me to various cultural norms and how they’ve developed. I also took another anthropology class on women’s global health that expanded my understanding of how different cultures treat women and the various challenges this population faces around the world. If it fits in my schedule, I would ideally like to spend at least a week in a different country to personally see how people outside the United States live and how their values differ from ours, not just learn about it in class. Ultimately, Ohio State has a diverse population and wide variety of opportunities that encourage global awareness; all I have to do is take advantage of them.

Original Inquiry: Ever since I learned Ohio State is one of the top research universities in the country, I have had a strong interest in engaging in research. From reading about all the various studies taking place, the ones in the realm of psychology appeal to me most, both because that’s my major and because I enjoy learning more about why people act the way they do. I have taken Research Methods and Data Analysis through the psychology department and am currently enrolled in the second level statistics class for my major. I am applying principles from all three of these courses as I participate in undergraduate research. As someone with an interest in Educational Psychology, I am particularly interested in the studies on childhood development and other similar topics. I have been fortunate enough to be a research assistant in the Cognitive Development Lab since the summer after my freshman year. Last October, I was accepted to become a member of the Honors Psychology Research Mentorship Program that requires me to complete a research thesis by the end of my junior year. I am testing adults in their ability to categorize based on fraction rules and comparing their performance to that of elementary students to help me understand how children learn fractions best, whether it’s with the presentation of visually-interesting stimuli or simple, straight-forward symbols. Once this project is completed by Spring 2018, I will continue my work in the Cognitive Development Lab until I graduate in the spring of 2019, pursuing other interesting research questions and increasing the literature available on child development. This will prepare me for my future career of being a child advocate where I will potentially utilize applied behavior analysis, which is based on data interpretation, and conduct further research to best help schools reach all students enrolled.

Academic Enrichment: Looking over my honors contract, I can say I’m definitely taking a rigorous course load that will challenge me intellectually. As of now, I will graduate with 166 credit hours. I have chosen to major in psychology with two minors in education and disability studies because I would ideally like to go to graduate school to earn a degree in educational psychology so I can work in schools, but not in the traditional way of teaching. I’m most excited about taking an Introduction to American Sign Language course through speech and hearing sciences for one of my minors because I have always thought it’s a beautiful language. After my exposure to it in elementary school from a deaf student in one of my classes, I have enjoyed using the minimal amount I know. Also, I am currently taking a class on exceptional children which is giving me an extraordinary amount of insight into myself, as a gifted individual, and into the types of students I hope to work with one day. These classes will greatly enhance my career preparation and are topics many people don’t get the opportunity to explore. In addition, I’m planning to continue taking marching band, which is a course that not only challenges my brain with music in ways that regular academics can’t, but it has also taught me a lot about personal responsibility and I think it takes my college career beyond the minimum requirements.

Leadership Development: As I’ve mentioned previously, I am a second-year member of the Ohio State University Marching Band and it is an organization that has already given me leadership opportunities I never expected. When in uniform, it is easy to identify me as a member of a key campus group and people have respect for us. I feel it’s necessary to behave exceptionally well to properly represent the band and in simple things, such as not jaywalking on campus, people follow my lead and don’t walk across the street when they see me waiting for the proper time. Simple things like this remind me that certain titles come with natural leadership opportunities that shouldn’t be wasted. In addition, I have been nominated for squad leader the past two years, which is incredibly rare for someone this young. I have since been named Assistant Squad Leader in E Row for my upcoming third year in band, which will put me in charge of twelve other members who will look to me for help with marching, music, and judging them during tryouts. My squad leaders my first two years set an excellent example for me to follow and I wish to be just as conscientious and approachable as they were. Finally, I was a member of the Student Advisory Council for the marching band my second year. This group is comprised of students in the band who are first-fifth year members. We act as liaisons between the other band members and staff, assisting in areas like communication, trip planning, and peer support. This position allowed me to have several chances to address the band, gaining visibility within the organization, which meant I was inclined to set an even better example than before. I am eager to see what other leadership opportunities my third and fourth years on campus bring, whether they be in band or not.

Service Engagement: As someone who logged nearly 1000 service hours in high school, service has always been a big passion of mine. To fulfill the First Year Experience requirement for my survey class, I attended a session on service and it exposed me to the vast number of service organizations on campus. BuckeyeThon hasn’t fit with my schedule the past two years unfortunately, but I have donated to the cause and I really hope I can participate as a dancer in future years. Also, things like Community Commitment are a great way to give back to the surrounding areas. Finally, as I am from Hilliard which is just twenty minutes away from campus, I sometimes take the chance to go home and play in our church orchestra or assist in teaching a Sunday School class for elementary students, giving back to the community that did so much for me growing up. Ultimately, this university has no limit of ways to give back, one just has to look for them and I can’t wait to see the difference I can continue to make on this campus and beyond in the next couple years.

 

Career

[“Career” is where you can collect information about your experiences and skills that will apply to your future career.  Like your resume, this is information that will evolve over time and should be continually updated.   For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Artifacts

[Artifacts are the items you consider to be representative of your academic interests and achievements. For each entry, include both an artifact and a detailed annotation.  An annotation is a reflective description of the artifact that attempts to communicate its significance.  For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

About Me

Brutus

Hi, my name is Abigail Mills, but I prefer to be called Abby. I am a first year student here at Ohio State, but recognized as a third year based on the number of credit hours I accrued through AP and dual enrollment classes in high school at Hilliard Davidson in Hilliard, OH. I am currently pursuing a major in psychology and am planning to continue on to graduate school to pursue a degree in Educational Psychology.

I am a member of E Row in the Ohio State Marching Band and have always enjoyed music, as I play five instruments. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, caring for kids, talking with friends, and participating in service activities. I have been an elementary Sunday School teacher for five years, a summer band counselor for two summers, and held a full-time nannying position this summer watching two children.

For most of my life, I wanted to be a teacher, but during my junior year of high school, I became more aware of the excessive amount of testing in schools and its effect on students through my AP psychology class and realized I could use my passion for working with children to benefit their lives in ways besides teaching them directly. As of now, I would like to work as a school psychologist or as a researcher in some capacity so that I can observe children who have various levels of learning abilities in different educational environments and help identify the best types of lessons that cater to their individual needs.

As previously mentioned, my interest in psychology peaked my junior year of high school when I couldn’t take a history class because it conflicted with another class and I selected AP Psychology to fill the gap. Through that class, I gained insight into the different types of psychology and discovered I have a particular interest in developmental psychology because it allows me to work with kids and as someone who is outgoing, I want to find a way to use my social skills to benefit others. However, the most influential event that helped me decide what I want to major in came halfway through my senior year. I was enrolled in French 5 and my teacher received an email from my elementary school pleading for assistance with a fifth grader who just moved from Rwanda and understood English at the level of a Kindergartner, but was fluent in French. She asked that one other student and I go over to help her, so every day, we would use our free period to go to the elementary school and communicate with her in French. At first, we just showed her around the building and helped her understand the words for basic things like lunch and school supplies, but as the weeks went on, we became her tutors for math, science, and English. In the four months I got to work with her, I watched as her excitement about learning multiplied and her abilities increased tenfold. She looked forward to our time together because she could feel like a “normal” child, one who could come to school and complete assignments. By the end of the year, she was able to communicate with her teacher and classmates in broken English and was much more confident about getting involved in activities. From this experience, I learned that every child learns differently and despite language barriers or learning disabilities, everyone deserves a chance at educational success.

I chose to come to Ohio State because the campus is so large and has so many different opportunities that smaller schools can’t provide. When I learned that the psychology programs here are ranked higher than those at the other schools I was looking at, I knew, without a doubt, that this was the school for me. While on campus, I would like to get involved in lots of research, particularly that which involves child development or the like so that I can start gaining knowledge pertaining to how kids learn and the processes their brains go through when learning and retaining information. I am a very dedicated student who works tirelessly to complete everything to the best of my ability and am very good with time management. I have grown up as part of Buckeye Nation and am so excited to spend the next few years exploring all it has to offer from a student’s perspective! Go Bucks!