At the end of my first year at the THE Ohio State University I have to sit back and reflect on my year. Thinking back on how much I’ve changed since first coming into the year in August to now. Starting off as an engineering major and discovering that was something that I would never want to do really helped me change my expectations for myself and the future. It really allowed me to reassess what I wanted from my future and how I valued happiness versus monetary stability. As well exploring helped me find a new passion in economics with which I’ve changed my major to.

Additionally, I’ve been able to make new friends especially through the scholars program. Getting to meet all the different people in my community and getting to know them better throughout the year helped change my world perspective as well getting to make real deep friendships. Many of the members of my scholars group helped me mature over the year as we tackled the year’s challenges together. Without my scholars group I would be wildly different today.

I met with both of my mentors, Declan and Evan. We met at the Terabyte Cafe inside of the 18th Avenue library on September 26th at around 2:15 for roughly 15 minutes. I hadn’t interacted with my mentors really at all before this meeting so it was nice to meet up with them. We talked a lot about living in dorms and on campus which gave me a bit of insight into what things I can come to expect. It was a lot of fun as well I learned that both of my mentors have changed their major at some point which is something that I’m currently struggling with on my own. I feel a lot more comfortable reaching out to my mentor in the future as I really felt like I got to know them more through this.

After my first two weeks here I feel a lot more at home then when I first walked through the doors of my dorm. Welcome week really did make campus feel smaller than it is getting to meet a bunch of new people that I see in classes and around campus as well as providing a ton of free food. My classes luckily have been easier than I thought they would be yet still quite a bit more difficult than what high school was like. Although this is offset by the amount of free time I have now to study and work on my own rather than being in class for eight hours a day. I really thought these weeks would be harder than they are and that I might miss the world of high school just a bit more than I do but honestly I love being at college and am looking forward to see what comes next on my journey. The Scholars program has also been great. I’ve enjoyed getting to meet and spend time with some of the other amazing people that are in the program as well as getting to do fun things like explore Columbus with all of them.

My name is Jack Pendleton. I’m a freshman and plan on majoring in some sort of business as of right now but that can always be subject to change. I enjoy almost all academic subjects. As well I am really looking forward to my next couple of years at THE Ohio State University.