It was 8:56 pm, San Francisco time, as I took a deep breath, pulled my backpack onto my shoulders, and took one last look out the window. I had a knot in my stomach as I walked towards the gate, and before I knew it I was on the plane, headed across the Pacific for thirteen hours to New Zealand.

Nearly two months later, I can’t explain why I was so nervous for this trip. Maybe because this was my first trip anywhere without my family, and I also wasn’t sure if I was going to become friends with any of my fellow Ohio State students traveling with me. I knew that early mornings, long drives, and jam-packed daily itineraries would become my life for the next three and a half weeks. But little did I know that breathtaking views, charming towns, friendly people, and way too much ice cream was also waiting for me on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Here’s just some of the things we packed into 24 days in a country known to Māori as “The Land of Long White Cloud:”

• Walked up the world’s steepest street
• Pet (and smelled!) sheep
• Watched sunrise over New Zealand’s tallest mountain, Mt. Cook/Aoraki
• Milked cows (and then drank it!)
• Went bungee jumping down into a 400-foot canyon
• Saw one of New Zealand’s largest glaciers
• Danced at a laundromat-turned-dancefloor
• Saw penguins, fur seals, sea lions, kiwi, eels, orcas, dolphins, albatrosses, glowworms, and plenty of other wildlife
• Got less sleep than we should have
• Personally sent 26 postcards and took about 4400 pictures

The “study” part of studying abroad also turned out to be a blast. This program is part of the School of Environment and Natural Resources and was focused on sustainability, so I learned a lot about the country’s unique struggles in conserving resources and protecting endangered wildlife, but I also discovered how sustainability is much more than just an environmental issue. It is an individual issue in that we each have different ideas of what sustainability means. But it is also a collective social rights issue because it concerns every person in the world, and requires cooperation from all different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives. I learned that we can best achieve high-quality, sustainable lives if we work to give everyone fairer access to resources, education, and the opportunity to share their personal views of sustainability. Only then will we be able to come together in celebration of our differences to protect our planet’s ecosystems.

The second week of February this past spring semester would have otherwise been one of the hardest weeks of freshman year. It’s halfway between the beginning of the semester and spring break, and it’s when the first midterms and exams are creeping up on students. It also tends to be the coldest time of the year, when we still have to trek across campus in single-digit temperatures. It’s easy to feel homesick, stressed, or ready for the beach.

Hour Eight: My friends and I at BuckeyeTHON 2017!

But then I went to BuckeyeTHON and all of that disappeared.

None of your seemingly big problems matter any more when you hear firsthand the stories of families who have spent birthdays, holidays, and every day in an oncology ward. That huge statistics exam coming up means nothing after meeting amazing kids who have never had the chance to go to a normal school and play outside at recess. And being away from your friends, family, and pets at home doesn’t seem so hard after listening to the stories of parents who moved away from their homes, jobs, and everything else just so they can save their kids’ lives at a faraway hospital.

BuckeyeTHON was so incredible because I felt so many things that weren’t about me or my problems. I was heartbroken to hear these families’ stories and to realize that thousands of others across the country are going through the same thing that no one should ever have to deal with. I was inspired by the courageous way that these kids look cancer in the face and still have the bravery to live their lives and be themselves. I was touched by the incredible support their parents and siblings provide, and I learned that when a child has cancer, their entire family does, too. I was proud to hear about how Ohio State’s own cancer hospitals is one of the leading cancer treatment centers in the world. And I was amazed that over 3,000 Buckeyes could come together and raise over $1.5 million for a cause that needs our every last penny.

For The Kids ♥︎

After twelve hours of silent disco, free food, face-painting, bouncy castles, amazing student performances, ga-ga ball, and tutu-making, I croaked out Carmen Ohio with my arms around my best friends as tears streamed down my face and smeared my glittery orange face paint. I continued to cry into my ice cream from UDF as we walked back to our dorm in our tutus and t-shirts in the freezing February air. I was still emotional from these families’ overwhelming stories of overcoming cancer, but a little part of me was sad that BuckeyeTHON was over.

So the third week of February rolled on, and while I still had four weeks of exams and assignments to go before spring break, I didn’t worry about them as much. Along with my sore feet and my tutu, it all reminded me that there’s a lot left we need to do For The Kids ♥︎

Ten classes, two finals weeks, and countless papers, projects, and homework assignments later, I’ve made it through freshman year. I learned about several different academic subjects, but I also learned a lot about myself, so here are a few assignments from some of my classes this year that I think best show growth and discovery.

English 2367.01H: Second-Year Writing 

Argumentative Essay-1cr4ggo

English has never been my favorite subject, so I took this class to finish my last writing GE requirement as soon as possible. But I loved this class because it was mainly discussion-based and encouraged us to build critical thinking skills. We mostly read nonfiction essays about important social issues, which was interesting because it provided new perspectives on familiar topics, and gave insight that I think will be valuable in future classes.

This assignment was an argumentative essay on an issue of our choice, and it was the final paper I wrote in this class.  I wrote about sleep deprivation because it’s a problem that I struggled with at the beginning of this year, but I’ve become better at getting enough sleep since then. I was able to build on research skills such as finding reliable sources, extracting relevant information, synthesizing this information, and citing all sources. While I have written research papers before, this one was particularly interesting and it felt like a big step from the research papers I wrote in high school.

Art 2100: Beginning Drawing

This class was meant to fulfill my Visual and Performing Arts GE, and I initially was on the fence about taking it because I never liked art class in elementary or middle school. I always told myself that I wasn’t really good at art and that I wasn’t creative enough to be good at it. But this class changed all of that for me because our professor encouraged us to put our personal experiences into our art, which inspired me to tell a story with every piece I painted or drew.

This particular piece, Unrooted, describes the way that I’ve moved around a lot growing up. The places on the box represent places where my parents have been stationed, while the dandelion is the official symbol of the military child and serves to represent the way in which our childhoods are carried around from place to place like seeds in the wind. The dandelion’s growth in the cardboard moving box symbolizes the ability to thrive amidst change in an unfamiliar place, something that I have learned throughout my childhood. While this piece means a lot to me and tells my personal story, I was touched by how it resonated with a few of my classmates in ways that I didn’t expect. One girl spoke up about her experience immigrating from Mexico when she was twelve and how she had to adjust to a new home, new people, and a new culture while moving far away from the life she had always known. Another classmate shared how his extended family all still lives in Sudan and how he hasn’t seen them in nine years, and how he feels like he shares his identity between the U.S. and Sudan. While our experiences weren’t exactly the same, we found that we could relate to each other through a simple piece of art, which made me realize how powerful art can truly be.

History 3700: American Environmental History

Environmental Issue Paper-1ixcw15

This history class was probably my favorite class all year, but it was also probably the hardest. Our professor assigned about 200 pages of reading a week, in addition to six or seven paragraph-length study questions we had to answer for our weekly quizzes. I realize that I will have many more classes with this kind of coursework in the future, but at first I wasn’t sure if I could make it through this one.I fell behind in the reading in the first couple weeks, and as one of only two first-years in a classroom of thirty upperclassmen, I was nervous to answer questions in class discussions. But after bombing that first quiz, I pushed myself to catch up and keep up the rest of the semester. Being caught up with all the reading made me more confident in engaging in discussions, and I’ve since learned the importance of participating in class. The works we read were from authors with various perspectives who discussed several different topics in our country’s environmental history, and I ended up finding the issues quite interesting.

At the end of the course we could choose any environmental topic to write a paper on, and I chose to write about the impact climate change could have on natural disasters and other weather patterns. It was one of the hardest papers I had ever written because a lot of the sources used concepts and words that I didn’t know much about, but this only made it all the more gratifying to finish the paper. I was able to build upon my research skills while using my own personal insight, which I know will be important for future courses.

Doodle

We call him Doodle.

Maybe our metallic blue minivan has a name because my triplet siblings and I were seven when he joined our family, but how can you not name a vehicle that has well over two-hundred thousand miles and has taken you just about everywhere?

Doodle is as much of a place as any of the countries and houses I’ve lived in. For ten years he has been a familiar old friend no matter where we were stationed, and I have probably fallen asleep more times in our van than in any of my seven bedrooms. From visiting our grandmother in northeast Ohio to spending eight hours driving through the Austrian Alps on the way to Venice and being dropped off for our first day of sixth grade across post, we have relied on Doodle for our every destination.

Moving every two to three years has made it hard to feel attached to any one place or house, but our trusty van has been with us for over half of our moves. Through the stress of military life and leaving people and places we loved, we could always count on Doodle to be in our driveway to welcome us after those rough first few weeks in a new place.

Now I’m old enough to drive, but I can never take Doodle anywhere without being reminded of when we were small enough to squeeze into our car seats on those long journeys down the Pennsylvania Turnpike or those times we stuck our heads out of the window to feel the rush of passing cars on the Autobahn. Tiny grains of sand eternally lodged in Doodle’s every cup holder evokes days of sitting out on hot Mediterranean beaches. A large discolored stain in the front passenger seat still smells of the coffee Mom spilled a few years ago in our rush to school one morning. There are probably still molecules of snow and ice from that winter we pushed through Northern Michigan to visit our grandparents, and I don’t know if we’ll ever find those last pieces of confetti from spending Bastille Day in Paris.

Our faithful minivan has been there from our first days of second grade to move-in day at Ohio State. He’s getting older, but Mom is convinced she can put another two hundred thousand miles on him. If any van can do it, it’s Doodle.

Because Doodle isn’t just any van. He is a place, a place where there are meaningful family conversations and awful jokes. A place where we complained that we were cold, tired, and hungry and fought over who got to use the comfy pillow. A place with probably enough Cheeto crumbs hidden under the seats to fill a whole bag. A place where we have belted out our first and our two hundred seventeenth renditions of “99 Bottles of Pop on the Wall” and played countless games of “I Spy.”

A place where I’ve grown up.