Author: mullaly.7

Personal G.O.A.L.S

While all five of the principles of the G.O.A.L.S. of the Honors & Scholars provide a great structure for personal growth and achievement, there are two in particular that are more applicable to me than the others in relation to both short-term and long-term success. These two facets are Academic Enrichment and Original Inquiry.

Academic Enrichment is particularly important to me as an actuarial science major and future actuary. By extension of my plans after graduation, it is necessary that I pass certain actuarial exams in order to become certified and practice my future craft. These exams are difficult and normally require several hours of study. As such, Academic Enrichment is extremely important to me so that I can learn the required material in order to pass said actuarial exams. Academic Enrichment has also always been rather important to me throughout my earlier years of schooling. I have always enrolled in the hardest classes offered by my schools simply because I enjoy gaining new knowledge and engaging in challenging curricula. Academic Enrichment has become no less important to me since my then. In fact, it has only become more important to me. When I first enrolled in OSU I was only an actuarial science major. Since then, I have met with my academic adviser and, at the risk of an extremely challenging course-load, have added the mathematics major and am currently double majoring. Additionally, I am looking into possibly taking additional classes past the double major in order to get a minor in either business and economics (which would also put my hours high enough to earn two separate degrees). My long-term plans for utilizing Academic Enrichment in my life currently consists of studying for actuarial exams after graduation to become certified in the required fields and constantly learning new techniques in my career field in order to stay ahead.

The other important facet to me is Original Inquiry. If I were to personally define Original Inquiry I would use the platitude ‘thinking outside the box’. While it can be much more than this cliché, this definition functions better for a discourse on how Original Inquiry effects me personally. This facet speaks to me personally for a large part because I enjoy approaching problems from unique angles, and I firmly believe this is an important skill to have for handling any number of problems, as eventually the normally used method for solving a problem will fail. Under such a circumstance, one must be able to handle said problem with another method, and at this point this skill becomes invaluable. Additionally, this facet has been helpful to me for solving new problems, as this skill has allowed me to approach new, original problems from unique angles, allowing me to easily solve problems where normal methods would cause one to flounder. This principle is also important to me in a future career perspective. As an actuary, I will undoubtedly encounter problems that will need to be approached from a unique angle using the cumulative sum of my knowledge to solve the problem successfully or most efficiently. As far as using this skill in the short-run, I plan on mainly using it for aforementioned reasons, in order to solve new or complex problems (both academic and personal) where normal methods would fail.

While all five of the facets of G.O.A.L.S. are important to me and are a great model to follow for personal and career development, Original Inquiry and Academic Enrichment are both particularly important to me personally and career wise. Academic Enrichment is important to me because I have an intrinsic love of learning and plan to utilize it heavily for my career goals and Original Inquiry because I plan on using it to problem solve in all aspects of life, including my career, in order to do things as efficiently as possible.

Microsoft Visual Basic Project Group

For my first semester at OSU, the Autumn 2015 Semester, I was part of a project group run through the MMC Scholars that was oriented towards those with little to no coding experience and taught basic coding language in Microsoft Visual Basic. As part of a final project for the group, we had to produce our own functioning string of code utilizing the skills we learned. The guidelines were simple in that we could produce almost any type of program we wanted as long as it used the structures we learned in the project group. For my final project, I created a GPA calculator (based off of normal, OSU GPA standards) that additionally gives the minimum percentage required in a single class to raise one’s current GPA up to a user-selected, desired GPA. An example of the resulting sheet created by the program can be seen below. The program allows the user to input up to ten classes and to give the name and grade (in percent) of each class. Finally the program asks the user for his or her desired GPA. The program then calculates the user’s current GPA and displays the minimum GPA required in any course to raise the GPA up to the given desired GPA. The program furthermore does not allow this required GPA to be higher than the possible 4.0 and will instead put “NA” if the required percentage in a class exceeds what is possible (this can be observed in the picture below for the class labeled “MATH”).

FinalProject

The most immediate development from this project I gained is the ability to read and write code at around a novice level and, while my level of skill may be quite trivial, this greatly increases my knowledge on computers and how they function. This, in turn, has positively affected my ability to use computers and has given me much insight into how computers process information. Additionally, the ability to code is not one to be taken lightly for, as an actuarial science and mathematics major, I could create code to solve complex problems for me that would take me too much time to do myself. The final project also had to be presented in front of a large group of peers, and I was able to utilize this to further my presentation skills. Below is the full code for the final project, exemplifying the skills we learned in the project class.FCoding1FCoding2FCoding3FCoding4

 

Strengths

My top five strengths are Competition, Achiever, Learner, Deliberative, and Input, in that order. I see Competition playing a role in my current life as it causes me to not only be competitive when I am involved with any sort of game, but it also causes me to view almost everything as something that can be won. As a result, I normally try my best in all areas, motivated by the strong desire to win, no matter with what I am involved. In addition, while I may get upset by loss and defeat, they only push me to try harder so that next time I will win. Achiever plays a role in my life as it helps me to create daily rituals or guidelines which I utilize to make the completion of tasks more efficient. Additionally, it causes me to be self-critical and, thus, I work hard to correct my shortcomings. Learner plays a role in my life as it is the reason I have a deep desire to learn and improve. Furthermore, it causes me to be enticed by challenges that test the limits of my abilities. Deliberative plays a large part in my life as it results in my working as an individual performer and causes me to be able to express central ideas with clarity while in a conversation. Additionally, Deliberative also results in my preference of a small circle of friends rather than a large one. Lastly, Input plays a part in my life as it also fuels my desire to learn and know more. As a result, I often memorize complicated words or multiple meanings of words which I use to describe things with precise detail, further increasing the clarity with which I speak.

My strengths also have an active role in my academic career. Competition has a significant role in my academics as I tend to view academics as a Competition in which I can reign victorious. In this sense, I quantify my performance against others’ and this in turn motivates me to try my absolute best so as I can be victorious. Achiever plays a role in my academics similar to the way it works in my life: it causes me to form daily routines with my work to complete it as efficiently as possible. Additionally, as a result of the self-improvement portion of this strength, it helps me to study efficiently by specifically studying the ideas or concepts I have forgotten or do not completely understand yet. Learner helps me academically as it causes me to study what needs to be studied or to complete tasks that are required to be completed whenever the need arises. Furthermore, I sometimes go out of my way to test the limits of my knowledge on ideas taught in class, which helps me to understand and utilize these concepts with ease. Deliberative plays a role in my schooling as it results in my thinking through what I will say or do before I do it; I do not simply dive right into essays or problems, I think through the major point I want to get across before I begin. Also, I tend to complete work in a businesslike manner, such that I have more dignity with my work and always put forward my best.  Input has an active role in my academic career as it helps me to garner and organize information and vocabulary in my classes, which assists me in my overall comprehension of the central concepts and ideas of a course.

Knowing my strengths changes my personal goals to a degree, however it does not largely affect my professional goals. knowledge of my strengths affects my personal goals mainly in the area of self-improvement, which is extremely important to me. As such, now that I know my strengths, I can work on refining my strengths and using them appropriately so I can get the most out of them and be the best I can be, rather than focusing on my shortcomings and neglecting at what I am naturally skilled. Knowledge of my strengths, however, does not affect my thoughts on my professional goals. My professional goals remain as graduating with a Bachelor’s of Science in Actuarial Science, passing two actuarial exams before graduation, and becoming an actuary after graduation and continuing to complete exams, and my specific strengths do not sway me towards modified or alternative professional goals.

Even though knowledge of my strengths does not change my goals, I will still utilize my strengths in order to achieve these goals. I will and already do utilize Competition in the completion of my goals by gauging my work against the work of others, mainly my brother’s. In this manner I will push and motivate myself to match and possibly exceed the output of my peers, thus completing my goals to graduate and pass the actuarial exams. The manner in which I will use Achiever to complete my goals is largely circular; I will use the self-improvement portion of Achiever to improve and refine all of my strengths. Learner will assist me in my professional goals as I will be able to study what I need to study to graduate and pass the exams, but also it will allow me to take charge once I am in my career field, which will help to coordinate the section of which I am a part within a company, thus making it more efficient. I will utilize Deliberative in both my personal goals and professional goals as I treat work in a businesslike manner and take great care in making choices, which will help me to complete my work, both for graduation and becoming an actuary, in a dignified manner, always giving my best work. Additionally, my tendency to work as an individual will help me to refine my strengths through a self-improvement process. Finally, Input will help me reach my goals in a similar fashion to how it already helps me now; it will allow me to collect and categorize the information necessary for me to pass my actuarial exams and ultimately become an actuary.

Welcome to my Honors & Scholars e-Portfolio

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.

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

Resume for Sean Mullaly

 

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

Sean Mullaly

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.