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Geoguessr was a social program hosted by Amber and Grace, that my roommate and I participated in with a couple of other first and second year IAers. It was held on Sunday, January 31, 2021 over Zoom. It was super fun to spend time with some of the older IAers because this year it’s so hard to create that sense of community with the other years. Geoguessr was also just super fun in general because I am horrible with geography, so it’s a fun time to try to guess where you are when you have absolutely no sense of direction and sometimes use directions to get to Target.

I would totally do this again, and I hope that other people would too because it genuinely was just a really fun time. I learned a little bit about geography and that calculus does NOT get easier. I also learned a little bit about some general locations and what Dutch and Spanish towns look like, as well as Vatican City and a few other places. For example, it took us to Catedral de Granada in Spain, which I learned about in high school with my Spanish 2 teacher who lives in Spain half of the year. It was super cool to see it come full circle in a game like this. Key takeaway? I am absolutely still bad at geography.

This program was organized by Lily Conway, starring Lesia Pagulich, a PhD candidate here at Ohio State studying gender and sexuality. Now, she’s researching post-Soviet de-colonial critical race and queer studies, especially in Ukraine, where she was raised. Lesia has also worked in getting rid of homophobic legislation in Russia (and subsequently Ukraine) that made homosexuality and sympathizing with it a crime, as well as working with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and advocating for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. This relates to IA because not only is there an ongoing conflict on the Crimean Peninsula (annexed by Russia in 2014), there is unrest in Ukraine and it is affecting the members of the LGBTQ+ community especially hard. Plus, International Affairs deals with inequality and oppressed groups of people, and working to create equality in our community in Columbus and globally.

I learned a lot about a conflict I honestly didn’t know was occurring – it’s not something that I’ve seen in media or in news stories, but it’s a very important issue and I’m really glad she came in and took time out of her schedule to talk to us. Plus, legislation and advocacy is something I’m really interested in, so listening to her was really wonderful.

On November 4th, I attended an Alumni panel with a few past IA people – Samantha Harris, Brandon Hofacker, Alex Northrop, and Courtney Johnson. They discussed what they were involved in, what they majored in, where they are and what they’re doing currently, their goals that they have and have had, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

It was honestly really cool to get that perspective from the panelists of having gotten through all of college and being in big person jobs or in grad school, and just knowing that despite how hard everything is right now things will change and move forward and get better as time goes on. Plus, I was really inspired, mainly by Samantha (and I actually got her contact information after the panel), because I don’t really know where I want to go in the future, but I have been considering law… It’s a really cool field to look into, and obviously I need to do more research, but I know I have the link of IA to get in touch with someone that might (definitely) know a little bit more than I do. It’s nice knowing that IA is an automatic group of people in all walks of life that I know I can fall back on if I need to in the future.

I listened to Inés Valdez detail her research and the classes she teaches during our optional Community Meeting today. She has her foot in so many things, it’s ridiculous! She’s written a series of articles and a book, and she’s working on a new book right now. She’s also an interdisciplinary educator, and has been in charge of Latina and Latino studies here under the Center for Ethnic Studies since 2019. She’s a woman of many talents, if you will.

Right now, she’s teaching two courses: Intro to Human Rights, an undergraduate class in the International Studies department, and Racial Capitalism, taught at the graduate level. While she does that, she’s working on her new book titled Empire, Labor, Migration, and the Reproduction of Western Democracy, which (if I remember correctly) is a study on how colonialism is interwoven into Western democracy and capitalism, as well as a study on racial capitalism.

Her research – not just for the book, but in general – includes politics of immigration, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism (which is what her first book was on), and the imperial origins of Western democracies.

This is important for International Affairs because racial capitalism as well as Westernization are both very relevant things in today’s global landscape. Racial capitalism is important because some have said that racism cannot be undone until capitalism is undone – at the very core of capitalism are racist and unjust values, and to eradicate those, we must eradicate capitalism. Perhaps it could be rebuilt, but it would look radically different in comparison to what it looks like today. Westernization or “Western” culture is slowly overtaking ethnic and native culture and that is a problem for obvious reasons. Our world would not look the same, act the same, be the same without the different and beautiful cultures across the globe.

On Tuesday, October 27th I attended the “How Does Social Activism Affect Government?” panel put together by Destiny Brown and moderated by Charity Martin through Social Change OSU. It was really interesting because it was a different perspective on social activism and what it’s actually doing to affect change in the community.

There were five panelists from different levels of government – Nuurah Parsons, senior from OSU USG, Justin Washington senior and Social Change ambassador at OSU, Shannon Hardin, City Council president of Columbus, Kevin Boyce, Franklin County Commissioner, and Erica Crawley, State Representative of the 26th district. It was really interesting to hear their different perspectives on social activism. Someone mentioned how the protests actually did create reforms in the police department – more reform occurred in four weeks this summer than there has been over the course of years. However, they also noted that change doesn’t come overnight – it’s not physically possible because no one person has all of the power. We have to keep constant pressure on our officials to make that change. Representative Crawley mentioned that young people going to the statehouse and being involved in the workings of government is a true push – she wants to see more of it because young people create the change.

It relates to IA because activism and politics are a global affair – we use awareness of global affairs to create activism here at home (at least, how I see it). We are global citizens; we want to see the world become a better place, a more humane place. Now of course, these are “we” statements and I cannot speak for everyone but that is my personal judgement based on the conversations I’ve had with others in our community.

On the 21st, I attended the financial work wellness workshop with bio scholars for professional development. It was led by Ben Raines (I think) and it offered good tips on how to budget and how to understand stocks and the financial world right now.

It relates to IA because finances and money are how the world runs and being a conscientious consumer and supporting small businesses will help support the world as a whole.

During this discussion, there was a detailed four step process on how to budget, and it explained different types of stocks and how they operate, as well as ways to save money for the future. You know, like 401k’s and the like.

I am a marketing and business major, so this was necessary information for me as I need to understand how money works to understand the different possibilities for job opportunities in the future. it also let me know that knowing the language will be very beneficial to me in the future. Going to the session has been able to give me a wider outlook on financials as a whole, and encouraged me to start putting money away into savings and investing as soon as possible.

For my first ever participation requirement (omg!!!), I attended the OSU Votes Civic engagement and education program, put on by Mitch Pinsky and Zaria Justice. It was over zoom as expected because we are in a time of global pandemic, but it was actually really interesting.

It relates to IA simply because the way that the United States deals with politics is far different than the way that the world deals with politics. However, the United States government plays a huge part in world affairs, and voting is a good way to stay involved in that process – and at large, global affairs.

Plus, with the state of the world currently (and especially the state of the United States) it is important now especially to make your voice heard, and voting is the best way to make that happen.

It was interesting to me because I was able to learn more about the way that the government works, more about ways and opportunities to vote, and how to make my voice heard in the government. Mitch did a very good job of explaining how to register to vote and emphasizing to the students present how necessary it was to vote, especially this year.