End of year reflection

Year 2 went by relatively well I’m glad to say. This year was the first time that I was on campus everyday so I was able to enjoy the campus atmosphere. As a pre-med student, I completed all my pre-med requisite courses this year and have started the work towards getting a good MCAT score. On top of that, I’ve accepted a position in the Osteoengineering lab and am doing research on bone regeneration utilizing various materials and 3D printing geometries. My classes have also been an enlightening experience, getting new friends, learning new things, being able to apply what I learn in class. This experience is one that I’ll never forget and is one that I hope to continue as I move onto my junior year of college.

Vision Statement and Mission statement

As a student at the Ohio State University with the large amount of research on campus, I wish to continue my efforts in research and start presenting! I also hope to impact my community through volunteer opportunities near by OSU, such as at the Noor clinic, Red Cross and other places. I plan on continuing my academics and am staying focused on maintaining good grades.

Finalized Artifact

This image is the title slide to the presentation that I’ve created with my Imam to help students of all ages learn how to read Arabic with proper grammar and syntax. As a student learning Arabic once upon a time, I, along with other students, have gone through the struggles of learning the language but as a person who can read and write it more proficiently now. I understand what’s difficult to learn from the standpoint of the student and I’ve tried to implement them into my presentation to make learning Arabic easier. This leads to my larger goal/aim of being a physician because of the idea of understanding how people feel and doing something about it. Being a physician requires sympathy/empathy and being able to understand people is key in being a doctor who can serve his/her patients well. I personally grew from this experience because this enabled me to think about various perspectives while creating a presentation. Allowing me to incorperate what I’ve felt as a student, what others have felt and how a teacher would explain concepts.

First Year Service Experience

One activity that I got involved in my first year of university is a presentation that I’ve been working with an imam in India with to improve students literacy in Arabic. As a student in the U.S learning arabic as a foreign language, it is difficult to first pick up, so I detail arabic grammar rules the way that I wish that I had learned them– simplified and easy to grasp. I also realized that it was important to put a reason for why things are done, especially with arabic grammar rules, so I made sure to detail that out so it’s easier to put a reason to why students are learning what they are.

Semester in Review(AU 2020)

University has been interesting. How I perceive it right now is that it is “high school on steroids.” The reason I say this is because everything is fast paced due to classes being semester long. There are so many extra-curriculars that I can participate in. There are many volunteer opportunities that are available. There are research opportunities available. These opportunities were all available in high school, but not to the magnitude they are present at university, especially at OSU.  On top of that, the variety of academics at university is enormous, there is a class for every interest. It was sort of like that in high school, in the respect that there was a class for English, Maths, Science, Social Studies; however, at university, there are more specific courses geared towards different areas of each topic.

For me personally, I have appreciated my time at University.  I was able to improve my critical thinking skills, as well as my ability to handle my responsibilities, as well as balancing priorities. For my first semester, I registered for 17 credit hours worth of courses. The first half of the semester was tough because I wasn’t really prepared for university. In high school, I typically listened to lecture and read the text book, and that was enough for me to get an “A”, however, at university, I am grateful to have professors who have actually made me master the content by applying it to real life circumstances, as well as asking trick questions and other sort of quizzing to make me think about a concept in multiple perspectives, rather than just regurgitating information. It took a few weeks for me to get accustomed to that, but once I got the hang of it, I was able to do my homework more efficiently, as well as better balance my time between academics, extra curriculars and other.

In addition to academics, I am glad that I had the chance to join a few extra curricular clubs, such as Code 4 Community, Medical Innovations Club, Pre-Medicine club, and other organizations that allow me to take up leadership positions as well as provide service back to my community. In high school, I was mainly focused on keeping good grades, but once I reached university, I desired to give back to the community that had aided me in reaching to college.

I also had the chance to join the Biological Scholars program at the Ohio State University, and this program had aided me in the transition from high school student to more prepared college student. For starters, the Biological Scholars program had given me the opportunity to meet new people , whether that was faculty member or other students. The Biological Scholars program had also aided me in previewing research that is occurring at the Ohio State University, and it also gave me the resources to be a better applicant for medical school. Resources like research opportunities, volunteer opportunities and other that make me a better applicant. The Biological Scholars Program had also helped me figure out my passion, and nurture my interests that have started in high school. Interests in research, as well as service were strengthened by being a part of this program, and it also helped me become a more empathetic person overall as I learned to relate to the people I had to help when I was volunteering.

In my opinion, we ,as human beings, are always personally growing, however what really matters is what we do with that growth. This semester, I feel that I have grown to be a more empathetic person, because of the volunteering opportunities that I have taken. So when reflecting back on these experiences allow for me to appreciate how far I’ve come from my past, less mature self.

G.O.A.L.S.

The “L” in the acronym “G.O.A.L.S” stands for “Leadership Development.” What this means is that one acts like a leader. A leader is defined as someone who empowers another, and allows them to feel confident with the task that is at hand. I have been able to develop my leadership skills this year as I am a project lead for the app development project in the Medical Innovations Club, in which we try to develop an app that gives diagnosis based on specific conditions a patient has. So far, none of us know how to code, so I’ve been responsible in making sure everyone understands the concepts of Swift(the programming language) and XCode (The platform used to code) so that when we go to program the app, we will have an easier time.

Career

My current aspiration is to become a physician, more specifically a neurologist. My desire to become a neurologist stems from my interest in Neuroscience. Neuroscience is such a complex yet the intriguing field of study and I believe that understanding neural pathways is key to helping patients tackle their conditions as lots of conditions have a neural component to them. I’m also interested in doing an MD/PhD program with a specialty in neuroscience during graduate school!

Artifacts

This here is my TI- 84 Plus CE calculator. I got this when I was going into eighth grade, the first time I ever actually felt “mature” in the sense of taking care of my own responsibilities. This calculator was the first expensive device that I was allowed to take outside of the house, and therefore was a visible proof of my responsibility with physical items. But looking past the physical aspect of this calculator, my utilization of the calculator had shifted. When I was in eighth grade, all I wanted to do on the calculator was to play “Pokemon Red” on it, and I do admit it, it was fun, but as I learned more and more maths from school as the years progressed, my utilization of this calculator was less for games and more for curiosity. The more maths I learned, the more applications that came along with it and the more functions of the calculators I learned about. I just stopped downloading apps, and instead, I was more preoccupied with learning the different functions of the calculator and how they worked. One function that particularly caught my eye was the graphing ability of the calculator. I played around with different modes of the calculator, different functions, different windows and learned how to graph interesting looking graphs. Although they weren’t of much practical use, it sparked my curiosity for maths because of how intricate and complex it was. In addition, my overall curiosity increased for other aspects of life because I started to question more, and wanted to learn more in rather than just to take it for granted. So this one simply advanced machine, has lead me to a passion that has shaped who I am today, a person who questions and learns just for the fun of it.