To further develop my global awareness, I have begun taking American Sign Language courses at OSU and learning about the Deaf Community. I plan to continue taking ASL and further immersing myself in Deaf culture, so that in the future, I might be able to utilize this skill and knowledge in my career.

This coming autumn semester, I am enrolled in Biochem 2900H which is the first class in the research class sequence for biochemistry. I will learn about different research opportunities in biochemistry at OSU, and then in the spring, I will hopefully be able to get involved with research that I am interested.

To further my academic enrichment, I have planned a rigorous course curriculum that includes a major in biochemistry and a minor in sociology. I have chosen biochemistry because it combines what I love about chemistry with processes applicable to the body and sociology because I think it is incredibly useful to understand how people function together.

For my leadership development, I have served as a peer mentor to freshmen students in the honors program here at OSU, which is something that I will continue doing going into the autumn semester. I will also be coaching a club volleyball team for a local club here in Columbus which is a great opportunity because I will get to teach girls about a sport I love.

This past summer, I volunteered often at local branch hospital of the Cleveland Clinic wheeling patients and making them more comfortable in their hospital stay, and this is a service that I plan to continue into this summer.

At the beginning of the semester, I was overwhelmed with the amount of freedom that had been thrust into my arms, as well as all the new responsibilities. It took me a while to get into a routine that works for me. Finding out when I should study, when I should socialize, when I should go to bed, when I should eat, took a lot of trial and error. Also, adjusting to living with three other people and learning how to respect their schedules took some getting used to. Now that I have developed a routine and adjusted to sharing a room with people, I think that I am having a lot more fun and success here. I look forward to what the rest of the semester and the year have to offer!