Greeting! Welcome to my Honors & Scholars e-Portfolio! I am Sean Mullaly, an Actuarial Science major enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences. During my time here at OSU, I plan on taking the first couple of actuarial exams as I complete the related courses. After I graduate in four years, I want to become an actuary and complete the certification process. However, I am still unsure at this point whether I want to go with the Casualty Actuarial Society or the Society of Actuaries, but I believe this choice will become more clear as I continue my studies and complete the exams. The purpose of this e-Portfolio is to provide an extensive overview of my learning experiences at The Ohio State University, both with the College of Arts and Sciences and the STEM EE Scholars, along with any experiences encountered outside the classroom.
Month: August 2015
Year in Review
When I first came into college I was very dependent on my parents; living on my own was not something I was exactly prepared for in my upbringing. I was nervous and uneasy coming into college and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. My main worries were sleeping through classes, as I had a tendency to stay up too late most days and needed my parents to wake me up in the morning, class work being obscenely difficult or procrastinating too much on the work, and living with people who did not have similar interests with me and thus having constant tension between me and my roommates. One of these worries was solved almost immediately upon my arrival, however, as the STEM EE program allowed me to room with like-minded people with similar interests. Not only did I not live with tension the first semester, but I actually made friends with my roommates, and we hang out together often. I also found that the class work was not as difficult as I feared. Despite this, it still can be difficult at times, however, I have been able to study with my fellow scholars and we mutually help each other out studying. In this regard, I have grown in maturity in that I am no longer too prideful to ask for help, as I was in high school where I had a very ‘I’ll figure it out myself’ mentality. In regard to my third concern coming into college, I have found that I have been more responsible with not staying up too late for the most part and have actually been able to get myself up for my morning classes.
Perhaps the most immediate way in which I have grown in college is simply learning how to live. As stated prior, I was not good at being independent; In high school my parents did most of my stuff for me such as laundry and preparing food. I pretty much only did my homework, everything else was handled for me. Coming to college, however, forced me to learn these skills for myself, and I am grateful that I was able to have intelligent peers and fellow scholars on the same floor of my residence to help me out with learning how to live. Another way I have grown is being more active, which is in large part due to the opportunities made available at OSU. I personally joined the fencing club and I normally fence twice a week now and have actually lost about fifteen pounds this year. Another way I have grown is through volunteering opportunities made available mainly through the STEM EE scholars but also through other groups on OSU. These volunteering opportunities have given me the chance to give back to the community that has given much to me, but they are also a humbling experience, and have helped to further reduce my pride. The volunteering opportunities made available through STEM are particular nice in that they additionally allowed me to bring STEM to other students, and it was particularly invigorating to see people get interested in STEM, especially the kids.
In sum, when I first entered college and the STEM EE scholars, I was very dependent on my parents and prideful in that I was unwilling to get assistance. Additionally I was very inactive both physically and communally. OSU and the STEM EE Scholars, however, have helped me to grow for the better. I am now rather independent and capable of living on my own and am not too prideful to ask for assistance when I truly need it in my studies. I am also physically active and overall healthier than I used to be. Finally, I am more active in my community and have been able to give back to those that have helped me to grow myself over the course of the year.
Resume
Critical Reflection on the Development and Transfer of skills in Scholars and Other Scholastic Programs
While Updating my Resume to closer reflect how a well-formulated, polished resume should appear, I was able to reflect on the utility of the Scholars program and other academic endeavors in the development of skills that can be transferred past college living and into a job environment. These skills, while at first seeming highly variable and unrelated, are all, as it turns out, related to the G.O.A.L.S. of the Honors and Scholars program. As such, it follows that the discourse of these transferable skills can be made simple by the usage of this model.
The G.O.A.L.S. of the Honors and Scholars program is made up of five principles: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement, and all of the skills acquired through scholars can be related to one of these principles. For Global Awareness, the skills that are developed through scholars are largely career related. While arguably not global, the knowledge of different careers and the interconnectedness of different careers is useful both in selecting a career and understanding how different careers work with each other in order to solve problems. As such, these skills will directly affect one’s ability to function in the job market by increasing their efficiency both through selection of career and through working with others where one falls short. The skills relating to Original Inquiry are thinking-outside-of-the-box and the asking and subsequent attempt to answer original questions. These skills are fostered in scholars through events and activities that force the participants to think uniquely to solve the problem or those events which coax the participants to ask questions on something with which they may already be familiar (and there are a fair amount of both event types). The skills relating to Academic Enrichment can mostly be logically deduced (as the programs are part of an academic institution) and ergo require little explanation. However, some such skills developed in the scholars program include learning how to study and, by extension, learning how to learn and memorize information, which can be extremely useful in any job environment. A rather large amount of skills developed in the scholars program are related to the Leadership Development principle. One such skill is relying on the strengths of others where one falls short. Another skill in this sect is recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of others, a useful skill for any leader attempting to divide work to be completed in the most efficient manner as possible. Both of these skills are immensely important to leaders in any job field and were developed in the scholars program through group projects and through team-building events. The final skills are mainly developed through volunteering through the scholars program and are part of the principle of Service Engagement. As such, these skills are all related to the ability to serve others, or, in other words, the ability to work, an obviously essential skill for any person entering the workforce. Through volunteering, members of the scholars program are able to garner experience working, which can be directly translated to the workforce as an invaluable skill. In sum, the scholars program develops important skills through the usage of the G.O.A.L.S. model and these skills and abilities can be directly applied to the workforce after graduation.
About Me
I was born in Canton, Ohio, but my family moved across the country when I was two to Aurora, Colorado, where I was raised until we moved back to Ohio when I was thirteen. I picked up the trumpet in the fourth grade and I enjoy both listening to and creating music. I have been in my schools’ concert bands since the fourth grade and their jazz bands since the sixth. I also joined marching band my senior year of high school and severely regret not joining earlier when I was given the opportunity. Another interest of mine is creating poetry. Whenever I become extremely frustrated or upset, I will normally write a poem in order to straighten my thoughts over or cope with whatever is bothering me. My final major interest is playing video games. I enjoy playing all types of video games, including puzzle games and strategy games. I especially enjoy when a game challenges me or forces me to think outside of the box, and I feel that my time spent playing video games has helped to foster my problem solving ability and my ability to reason.
In Colorado, I went to large schools with several thousand kids in them. In the fourth and fifth grades, I was in the Gifted and Talented (GT) program, which was basically an elementary school honors class. When I was just about to graduate from elementary school, I was actually not planning to continue taking harder and more challenging courses. However, my GT teacher insisted that I should, and so I, reluctantly at the time, signed up for the accelerated courses in middle school. This is particularly important as it is the reason I took the most challenging courses throughout my schooling career and likely the reason I’m here at OSU. After we moved from Colorado to Ohio, I found myself in a much smaller schooling system. I went from being in a middle school with 2000 or more kids to being in one with roughly 500. Not only the size was different, but the general attitude of the population was different. The people were nicer and I was no longer bullied for being smart, rather I was respected for it. I also found that the people all knew each other, even people in different grade levels, which was interesting as I had just come from a place where most people only knew their classmates. In high school, I dabbled around with other extracurricular activities, such as chess club and being part of the school’s stage crew, each for only a year. I was also a member of the school’s branch of the National Honor Society when I was an upperclassman. However, my main extracurricular activity was still band and I was in four different school bands when I was a senior.
I have always been a man of math; I was always better with remembering number sequences over other types of information, such as names, and I have always liked math better than every other subject. Perhaps the reason for this is that I’m a visual learner, which can be both beneficial and crippling at times. I have a hard time understanding what someone is describing without a physical picture of it, whether it be a number problem, a physical object, etc. However, when I do see something, it sticks much better in my mind. Another area of growth for me is I have a near photographic memory. I can memorize required material with several less repetitions than most other people, and I have played some memory games to try to reinforce my ability to memorize. Despite this, I have many areas of frustration. My greatest frustration and my Achilles heel is that I am remarkably competitive. This competitiveness is one of the main reasons I did so well in school. I always liked to win, be first, and be the best, and school was just another game that I could win. However, as a result, I do not handle defeat or failure well, and I am, at times, a sore loser. For example, in the sixth grade, I received a single B+ on an otherwise straight A report card from my English teacher. While this may seem trivial, my victory, so to say, was to get straight A’s, and because I failed my goal I started blaming the teacher and I remember harboring resentment against her for several years afterwards. Another area of frustration for me is that I am a very literal person, and because of this I struggle with interpretation in writing. I tend to miss most symbols and if something is not meant to be taken literally, I will not normally pick up on this and, as a result, I will garner less from the writing than most of my peers. A final area of frustration for me is that I get overly nervous when I have to talk to new people. Once I know someone, I am fine, but I have a very difficult time talking to new people. As a result, I will avoid trivial things such as answering the phone when an unknown number appears. In fact, it is the reason I did not call our floor’s RA back over the summer after I missed a call from him; I was too nervous to call him because he was someone whom I did not know.
As high school progressed I noticed more and more that I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I had considered many options, but nothing seemed like something I wanted to do for a career. The first career I wanted to do was I wanted to create video games. However, after some time spent on simple game creating programs, I quickly realized I did not want to make a career out of the creation of video games. The next career I decided on was architecture. However, when I was on tour of several colleges with my friend, we visited many of the college’s architecture programs, and I realized that architecture was more art-based than I desired. Additionally, most colleges required a portfolio for applying to architecture, and I was not good at drawing, nor did I have enough time to become good enough to have a decent portfolio by the time graduation came around. I then turned to civil engineering instead, which I considered to be similar to architecture. However, I got to visit a civil engineering facility during a program through my school, and I found it to also be something I was not interested in developing a career out of. At about this time I was in AP Statistics as a result of a recommendation from my Algebra II teacher the year prior to take two math classes, and I found I really enjoyed statistics, more so than other standard math courses. However, I did not know how to make a career out of it, but halfway through the course my teacher told me about a job in the statistics field: actuaries, and after some research and even shadowing an actuary, I decided it was what I wanted to study in college, and so I looked for universities that offered actuarial science. OSU was on that list.