Back in the fall of 2015, I entered Ohio State as a young freshman, with absolutely no idea what I was doing. I remember that the first event that I attended in college was a ropes course with the STEM EE scholars. This surprise event set the tone for the rest of the semester and my Freshman year at OSU. Throughout my first year at OSU, I believe that I have grown immensely, in both academic knowledge and as a young adult. Through the events and programs put on by the STEM EE group, I have learned lots of valuable life skills such as better studying techniques and how to engage children in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
When I entered OSU, I was quite ignorant of most of college life. I didn’t know how to schedule my time wisely, I didn’t know what to do with my time, and I struggled to find out where everything was located on campus. Coming out of my senior year of high school, I had been coasting through school and the academic challenges associated with college were a tough shift that I was forced to deal with. I was afraid to get help and tried to do everything on my own. Also, I feel that I was a much more selfish person and did most things for personal gain rather than donate my time for others.
This all changed with the STEM scholars program. Through STEM, I learned that it is okay to get help when you struggle in class and that you are not alone. That was probably the biggest lesson that I was taught when I came to OSU. With a new pool of the world’s top students, the standards of excellence were raised much higher. The friendship and advice that I was gifted with in living in the STEM scholars cohort is something that I will always benefit from.
Another way that STEM helped me was through opportunities of outreach in the community. Through STEM events, I was able to interact with the youth community and engage them in cool scientific experiments that hopefully left a positive impact on their views of STEM fields. This engaged me as a leader and I feel that I now have better communication skills than I previously had.
The STEM class was also very helpful for me. The cool topics discussed in the material opened my eyes to the amazing ways that STEM fields are applied to the real world and every day jobs. My academic knowledge has been expanded by the STEM class. One of the most helpful things that we did in class was take a strengths test and then learn about what the evaluation of our various strengths means for our daily lives. We learned how to focus on our strengths and improve them rather than wasting time trying to better the things that we are not as skilled at. Throughout my experiences in STEM, I feel that I have matured both as a student as well as a member of the community.