Throughout the past year I have had the opportunity to participate in a variety of activities thanks to programs available to me through The Ohio State University. I was able to learn valuable lessons through my participation in various events across campus. Some of these activities include the Experimental Development groups and the required events through STEM Scholars as well as some projects completed as part of my coursework. For example, the entire semester in Engineering 1182 was spent gathering information for and testing the Advanced Energy Vehicle (AEV) and I learned much about the engineering process and technical writing. Another class that I believe was a huge learning experience is chemistry lab. I took a General Chemistry Lab course both semesters of my first year which allowed me to spend far more time in lab than I had been able to in all of high school.
I have been able to grow as a STEM Scholar in many different facets throughout my first year of college. The Experimental Development groups allowed me to design an interactive science project and present it to 6-12 year old kids in libraries and community centers all around Columbus. Another opportunity that I was able to learn from was the scholars events. Whether it was a Tuesday STEM Scholars event or a science café talk, in depth information was always discussed regarding a wide variety of topics. One event I attended that really made me think was a talk on mathematicised science. Chris Pincock discussed theoretical mathematics and how the process of researching and implementing mathematical topics has evolved through history. As a result of attending these events I was also able to learn about host-pathogen battles and how the body fights disease, climate change, statistics and how they can be manipulated, and even puppy behavior and raising puppies.
I have also been able to experience new and interesting projects through my coursework. After graduating I could see myself working in or with a lab and in the past year I have spent more time in lab than ever. This has allowed me to be exposed to a variety of new instruments for running different experiments. The lab practical was a useful assignment in which the students were tasked with setting up their own procedures for a two part titration experiment. Another project that I grew from is the AEV project. My group of four was tasked with creating a design and code to run the AEV along a track to connect with cart also mounted on the track and pull it back to the start. Labs throughout the semester were dedicated to researching different aspects of the design, such as propellers, and testing different designs and codes. I was introduced to coding late in high school but I didn’t learn very advanced coding until my first semester of college. Engineering 1181 introduced me to MATLAB and made it possible for me to learn a variety of functions and uses for the MATLAB software as well as coding in general. Coding was done in 1182 as well but the focus of that class was the engineering process and the AEV project. The past year of engineering has taught me much about technical writing as well. Lab reports were due on a weekly basis and I became very familiar with the proper technical writing style used for most lab reports. Overall, I have learned much about many topics in the past year and I can only hope that the next year is as interesting as this one has been.
I am a first year chemical engineering student from Cincinnati. That at least answers the top three questions, What year are you? Whats your major? Where are you from? I’ve also been asked about my scholars program and how I chose it. The easy answer is that I’m great at math and science and I always want to figure out how things work, so I thought Science Technology Engineering and Math was a good choice for me. However, I’ d rather answer the common question of how my summer was. That one takes a bit longer to explain. While many people I know might have worked or just hung out, I was able to spend most of my time out of town. The first and my favorite of my trips was to Electric forest, a music festival in the state up north but still a great way to kick off my summer. I was able to see tons of great artists and spend time with some close friends. After that I made a few more trips to my families lake house I was invited on a trip with 10 guys and 1 dad to Wisconsin. Nothing says America like bald eagles flying overhead your pontoon or the “Paul Bunyan Breakfast.” Then came my final trip which was to Alaska for fishing. Needless to say, we did pretty well with about 130 lbs of vacuum packed fish between 4 people. That pretty much sums up the past 3 months for me, except for my job but the circus understood my need to travel.