Autumn Semester in Review

Pictured above is a group of mainly first year Mounties (and some second years) at Smith’s Famous Farms after volunteering at the Fall Harvest Jamboree. This was one of my favorite service events of the autumn semester.

   This past semester has been such a growing experience for me. Through the ups and the downs, I feel like I have learned a lot about myself and my aspirations.

   As a pre-nursing major, my entire freshman year has been spent heavily focused on school and grades. While I have given up some opportunities to hang out with friends or get more involved in the campus, I think it will be all worth it when I (hopefully!) get my acceptance letter to the College of Nursing in June.

   Throughout high school, I rarely studied and was able to do very well in my classes. The lack of study skills I had really came back to bite me when starting at Ohio State, so I quickly had to learn what worked and didn’t work for me. Luckily, my first semester classes were not too overbearing or stressful, so I was able to experiment with my studying style.

   I am extremely happy to say I ended my first semester with a 3.94 GPA, but college is not only about grades. Between study sessions, I was able to make some amazing friends through my scholars program. Two of these friends are also in the pre-nursing program with me and have been a huge support whenever I am freaking out about a class or the nursing program (especially for this second semester!). It’s insane to think you can get so close to people in such a short amount of time, but I don’t think I would have gotten through this first semester without the “family” of people I was introduced to in the Mount scholars program. I did not really realize how close I was to some of the people in the program until the fall retreat, which was probably my favorite memory from the fall semester.

   Not only is Mount like a family, but I have been able to get involved in some awesome service projects. The Fall Harvest Jamboree in October was one of my favorite service projects this past semester. It was so much fun to hang out with the families who came through. While we were working the whole day, I loved being able to do what I could to put smiles on the kids’ faces when they were playing a game or buying a bag of popcorn with money they saved up. I also loved working at the Wheelchair Rugby service event. I had never seen anything like it, and it was really cool to hear about the sport.

   I am really excited about the semester and years ahead. While, so far, I have been pretty stressed out with 8am and 6:50am classes packed with content (and having 5 exams in the first 3 weeks) I really feel like I am learning for a career, which is an interesting experience I haven’t had before. I am excited to live with 5 close friends next year and (hopefully) getting into the nursing program. I am very happy I chose OSU and can’t wait to make more memories here.