Comedy Network Live Show!

I am part of two of the five comedy organizations on campus, The Sundial Humor Magazine and The Backburner Sketch Group. This year we accomplished what no class has done before and got The Sundial, Backburner, Buckeye Standup, Fishbowl Improv, and 8th Floor Improv to do one big, collaborative show! As part of Backburner, I wrote a sketch ,”Hecklers”, that was performed at the event. Here is a photo from the event (which was on April 1st, no joke) with some fellow members performing it, attached also is a pdf of the original sketch (minus the improv and un-recorded edits).

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Hecklers

I really enjoyed spending time with so many “funny” people on campus while learning a great deal about organization and communication. It takes a lot to pull something like this off and I’m glad to have been a part of the first of what we hope to be a long lasting tradition.

Strengths

Talent can introduce a person to aptitude, but skill surpasses the birth given abilities. After taking the Gallup test, I found my current top 5 strengths to be Positivity, Maximizer, Empathy, Woo, and Adaptability. Listed from most to least prominent, my strengths represent me as a relatively emotional person. My positivity enlists happiness for myself and everyone around me! Being a maximizer, I employ the best out of all my team members and never leave work less than perfect. My empathetic attitude, allows me to know an outward perspective for others, like Pocahontas ‘knows every rock and tree and creature – has a life, spirit, and name’. (Schwartz, 1995) Woo, or Winning Others Over, represents my strive for approval by all parties, personally I see this as a weakness (I shouldn’t care what others think of me), but I might discover, later, the usefulness of this strength. Finally, my adaptive nature keeps my mind focused on the task at hand, rather than stressing about the unpredictable future to come. Overall I believe my strengths are a decent indication of the man I am today.

With a spotlight on my academics, these strengths are leading me to a successful college career thus far. My adaptability plays heavy while preparing for a quiz, allowing most of my focus to the subject that is most important at the moment. To sprinkle some “positivity” on my Woo strength, the later pushes me to be fairly acquainted with my professors and TAs, which is academically and professionally a positive trait, along with my classmates, which always helps when studying for even the tiniest matters. My empathy works its magic in many ways: in outward classes like ‘Asian Philosophies’, I can set aside my beliefs to further understand the reality of other religions and principles. Not so similarly, when a fellow student is struggling, I long to help them, not only do I feel wholesome for aiding others, but the extra explanation is great practice for me as well. Being a maximizer, I am never settled with my homework/studying until I have done everything I can. This trait is an enormous motivator which sets my learning apart from that of other students. My positivity always comes in handy during a high-pressure exam such a midterm or final; while every other student is nibbling on their fingertips or cursing the world, I am smiling and cheering everyone on, usually with some upward finger-guns and the occasional “Midterm Turn-up!”. With my strengths, school is a challenging, but doable, walk in the park.

As I plan on becoming an actuary after graduation, I see my strengths really helping out in the future. Along with a strong mathematics education background, good communication skills are required to help explain complex ideas to not-so familiar individuals.  Woo will help with that, as I have no fear of meeting new people and walking them through my work or just consulting with them to see what they are looking for from me. Especially if I enter a career of consulting, my work will always involve constant interaction with clients. Adaptability should enhance my ability to focus on work in the moment. To keep integrity, which is required in a position where I am given a lot of knowledge and responsibility, my empathy will retain me from mistreating my accountabilities. Being an accountant is all about details, on the other-hand, when you ask an actuary what 2+2 equals, she/he will say “what do you want it to equal?”. Some jokes aside, missing data in analysis is a serious problem and can critically disrupt models, being a maximizer, I won’t stop till my work is one hundred percent kosher. I can’t wait to see how my strengths grow and lead me to future success.

G.O.A.L.S.

            The STEM EE Scholars program has been a large part of my freshman year engagement. Without scholars I would probably just be going to class, making minimal amounts of friends and keeping to myself. With it, however, I am exploring the many educational opportunities OSU offers, spending free time volunteering to help students in my area, and making more friends than I ever thought. Underlining the requirements and activities in Scholars are the Honors & Scholars G.O.A.L.S.: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement. Anything I do as part of the organization is for the betterment of one of these aspects in my and my colleague’s lives. I will spend the rest of this post discussing my involvement in reaching my goals of Academic Enrichment and Leadership Development.

I believe really focusing on these two goals will help most with my future personal and professional growth. As I work my way through college, I am learning so much. From attending extra seminars about interesting applications of science to joining the Radical Pi and Actuarial Science clubs, there are so many ways I can explore my educational interest beyond just going to class. I love learning so enriching my academics with extra curricular activities is a great way to accomplish personal goals. I would be disappointed in myself if I knew I finished college without taking full advantages of all the opportunities I have for bettering myself through the experience.

Beyond my interest in pushing my education to the limit, I want to make sure I develop skills to use in my future career. Tutoring children at local public schools and the local library homework help center has taught me a lot about education and leadership. I’ve found myself learning knew ways of explaining concepts to students and managing multiple pupils at the same time. These communication and leadership skills I’ve absorbed will be very helpful in my career as an actuary. An important part of practicing risk-management is explaining your work in a simple manner to those that won’t understand the nitty gritty so learning to explain difficult lessons in a tutoring environment is very helpful. I hope I can realize this growth in the future when I have an internship position where it will be applicable.

There are many meaningful facets to being a STEM Scholar, but Academic Enrichment and Leadership Development stood out to me because of there relevance to my experience. While my interpersonal skills help me in my volunteer work right now, they will come in handy later in life when I need to explain a stochastic model or probability relationship. My thirst for knowledge is important in my career field, since actuaries have to pass many exams in order to move higher in rank, a desire to learn is imperative. Even after I am an FSA (Fellow of the Society of Actuaries) it will always be nice to learn new ways of looking at and solving problems. I believe its important for every student to push their education to the limit and involve themselves in events or organizations that will help to make them better functioning members of society.

Career

Being in the Scholars program has taught me many transferable skills. For example, I have grown into a much better teacher helping students at the Whetstone Library Homework Help Center. I can use my strong abilities to communicate difficult concepts later in life when I am an actuary, explaining my work to those less actuarially inclined. While in Scholars, I have also gained appreciation for experts in other fields and have a more meaningful idea of how we can benefit from each other in years to come.

 

For anyone interested, here is my resumé:

 

Resume-Phillip Sanderell

About Me

My name is Phillip, I am an undergraduate majoring in Actuarial Science. Many people I tell that to don’t know what what such a degree will teach you, and neither did I until about three years ago…

Sitting at my dining room table, enjoying dinner with my family, my parents ask “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Shot for an answer, I replied “I don’t know, I like math.” “If you like math” they said, “you should be an actuary. Since then, I’ve absorbed myself in everything actuarial. As a junior in high school, I sat in at an Actuarial Statistics class at The Ohio State University to get a feel for the future I so desperately have longed for. In such educational lighting I met Prof. Chungsheng Ban, and many practicing actuaries from varying central Ohio firms.

One of these firms, Towers Watson gave the students a group assignment in which we were to take a client’s work profile and determine their pension plan valuations. I did not complete this project at the time because I wasn’t part of a class group and the math was way to complex for me. Despite my excusable lack of work, though, by the end of my internship I needed something to show for all the extra effort I was putting into attending the class outside of school. I needed to complete this project, and with the class on its own course, I ws seemingly on my own.

Diving right in, I encountered many difficult barriers. I didn’t know how to use excel,  my math skills and vernacular weren’t necessarily strong enough to comprehend what needed done, and I totally DIDN’T understand the given death rate percentages! Despite my hardships, I did finish the project with the help from many peers. I reached out to my high school teachers for math and excel help, and a few actuaries from Nationwide and Sherry Chan, who was, at the time, the Chief Actuary at the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio.

Moving through my Junior year was a big step towards furthering my future career as an Actuary. As I move into college, I am on my last semester stretch to completing my pre-major requirement courses and plan to start studying for my first exam (FM) once I get a grip of my workload for this semester at OSU. I plan on becoming a Property Casualty (P&C) actuary. My dream job is managing mergers and acquisitions for Disney.

 

Head Shot

Year in Review

[ “Year in Review”  is where you should reflect on the past year and show how you have evolved as a person and as a student.  You may want to focus on your growth in a particular area (as a leader, scholar, researcher, etc.) or you may want to talk about your overall experience over the past year.  For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]