Of my three semesters here at Ohio State, while this one may have been the most daunting, it has probably been the most rewarding.  I struggled a lot with motivation and results last year, but things seem to be going better so far this semester.  I have found more interest in my classes this semester which makes it much easier to put time into each of them.  Also, in the past I have had difficulty paying attention in lecture, but that hasn’t been as much of an issue in my classes this semester.  Even though I complain about my last two semesters, I think my troubles during those semesters helped me to grow, which has made this semester much more enjoyable.  This change of mentality has helped to give me optimism for classes and semesters in the future.

Each semester and each class brings upon weeks and weeks of different midterms.  I find that every semester the plan is to get ahead yet somehow midterms seems to creep up ever so quickly.  Given the amount of time it takes to learn new material, it seems that a large majority of midterms fall within the same week or two every time they come around.  This brings the same “midterm week” stress about three times a semester.  I find that midterms are the best way to take stress and make the most of it.  This type of stress is just intense enough to force focus on students, basically making students work on their study skills.  With every midterm, I find different study techniques that help and those that don’t.  This mentality helps to keep me from getting down during what can be a pretty stressful time, while also helping me prepare for finals.

This coming week I will be writing my first paper of the school year.  My freshman year I didn’t take any classes that required any “heavy-duty” writing, only writing 2 short papers describing different experiments for my introductory Psych class.  This upcoming paper is a five to six page analysis of “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich.  While I am not worried too much about this assignment, I have never had to anything like it so far in my college career.  I know as long as I put the time and work into this it will pay off in the long run.

I started out both my freshman and sophomore years of college as a chemistry major.  As my freshman year progressed, my views of my future slowly but surely started to change.  I began to realize that my dream of graduating with a degree in chemistry in order to continue onto medical school may not be the best route for me.  This realization truly hit me once I dropped my second Calculus course.  I made an appointment with my Honors Arts & Sciences advisor, because I knew I would need to somehow make up for dropping Calc II.  During this meeting, my advisor brought up the possibility of a major change.  I think she sensed my lack of enthusiasm towards my old major, so we talked through the situation.  In reality, I had loved chemistry in high school, but had really dreaded it ever since I had gotten to college.  It had been the main focus of both semesters of my first year here, and I was not looking forward to the three more years of that to come.  So we talked through my interests, and I decided towards a change to an Evolution & Ecology major.  This meeting with my advisor helped to reassure me that I was not changing majors based on incapability to pass my classes as a chemistry major, but simply because I enjoy the study of Evolution, Ecology, & Organismal Biology much more.  We also talked through my goal of attending medical school after obtaining my undergraduate degree, and she assured me that I would easily be able to cover all of my pre-med requirements.  While this was the spring of 2017, I took the summer to affirm my thoughts on this major change, and as I thought about it and looked at classes, I became increasingly excited.  As I arrived on campus for my sophomore year, I was certain of my impending choice, and as of a few weeks later I had become an Evolution & Ecology student.

[The Home Page will show a running blog of your recent posts, which are categorized and show on that category’s page. Please delete this post or edit with your own information.]