In August, I began my journey as a first year RA on north campus. As an RA, I provide support to my residents and my hall director with anything they may need. I organize events and craft nights for my residents to attend in order to build community and get them to engage with each other.  I also try to engage with the other RAs in my building during rounds, our weekly staff meetings, and hanging out with them from time to time. So far my experience has been good. My residents are great and they follow all the guidelines set by the university. They interact well with each other and know that they can also lean on me when they need to. When I started, I was worried about being able to create a positive and safe community for my residents and being able to balance my classes, extracurricular activities, and the demands of the job. Luckily, the feedback I have gotten for my residents have been positive and they do feel like our floor is a close-knit community. However, we getting close to finals, the pressure and stress that comes with my rigorous courses, wanting to get more involved, and keeping up my responsibilities as an RA has been a bit challenging. As I am still learning how to navigate these challenges, hopefully, second semester I will have a better grasp of it.

A pumpkin I painted during my socially-distant Pumpkin Painting Party with my residents.

Afternoon Bites with RA Stephanie: Buckeye Donuts, coffee, hot chocolate, and tea provided to residents during Game Day.

Stephanie Ogonuwe

As a first year student in Mount Leadership Society, I am currently organizing a service project with my fellow Mounties to address poverty in Columbus. We have gone through contacting two agencies to work with, determining what we want our projects to be, thoroughly planning those projects, and creating a budget. As a team, we are collaborating with the Dream Center to host a birthday party for their guests during an evening dinner. The Dream Center is located near campus and caters to providing resources for individuals in underserved Columbus communities. Our other project involves a book drive for Prairie View Elementary students and spending part of the day reading and interacting with them through various fun activities.

Planning these two projects has been overwhelming at times, but it has also been a rewarding experience. I have learned a lot about the power of collaborating with others to make a positive contribution in the community. As a leader, it would be very difficult to do everything on your own; therefore, it is important to lean on others and their strengths in order to accomplish the group’s goals. I am grateful to be working with the people on Team #ChangingLives (Team Poverty) because they always come ready to share their own ideas and determined to do what it takes to fulfill our purpose of serving others and creating a lasting impact.

Buddy Boxes 

In September 2019, I had the pleasure of volunteering at The Family Mentor Foundation with a group of first year students from my scholars program. During our time there, we helped the organization make buddy boxes. Buddy boxes are boxes filled with snacks for elementary students in various schools around Central Ohio. The Family Mentor Foundation makes about 1,500 buddy boxes each week to deliver to students who may not have food to eat for the weekend. Therefore, our goal was to help them build and fill (with snacks) 1,500 in three hours. Fortunately, we made over three thousand buddy boxes!! It was very heartwarming to know that within the small amount of time we were there, we had made such a huge impact. I love being able to do something to positively impact my community and making someone else smile or feel loved. So kudos to us for working together for a great cause! Check out the video below to see us all in action, unfortunately I couldn’t add any music in the background, but I hope you can still enjoy the six-second silent “movie”.