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I attended the event hosted by STEM Scholars with the speaker from the Multicultural Center. Going into the event I felt like I had a pretty good handle on my identity and identifying where I do and do not have privilege. I do feel like this is somewhat influenced by both my identities and my familiarity with diversity and inclusion efforts because growing up in an affluent suburb of Washington DC exposed me to these ideas fairly early and frequently I would say, due to the prevalence of these initiatives and ideas just being very present in my community, even if sometimes it was in a derogatory manner. I felt similar to the way I did at home during this event because we got the chance to learn about this ideas in an open environment that promoted learning about these beliefs and challenging your previously held prejudices, if you will. I learned that campus is pretty open to these ideas because of the widespread support of the MCC and how many people, including professors and advisors, have incorporated the normalization of telling someone your pronouns when you meet them or give a presentation, for example.

I think diversity plays a massive role in STEM. In my personal experiences, STEM is extremely white-male dominated and at least to me, this has had a significant affect on my experiences in STEM spaces. In high school for example, when I was part of a research team at NASA Langley Research Center, the men on my team outnumbered the women 3 to 1, and their attitudes as such had a large impact on me and the other women’s experiences in the program and that was just a short time. The erosion at women, especially, although I cannot speak on behalf of the experiences of persons of color, over time with this sort of institutionalized disadvantage means that it’s harder for women to connect with people having similar experiences in their workplaces. I was lucky enough to have the three other girls on my team and we shared a living space for the duration of program and after long days of being pushed aside, talked over, and ignored, we would often put on some music and complain about our grievances. This allowed us to vent but it also developed a strong sense of camaraderie between us. This is why I believe that there can never be too much emphasis on diversity and inclusion in STEM fields, because things like this are unfortunately too common for minorities in STEM.

I really think that STEM Scholars has done a good job on increasing diversity awareness in our program but there is always room for improvement on the rest of campus, but more so across the country because I think that Ohio State has really made an effort to bring minority communities together and have them share their experiences to increase education across campus. Everywhere I look I see posters about different groups on campus hosting events to increase diversity on campus and educate people of all backgrounds on different topics.

The seminar I attended was in the astronomy department on tracing the chemical origins of exoplanetary worlds.

I went by myself, after my last class of the day on Thursday, in which all I wanted to do was study for my impending calculus midterm, or go to sleep. I made my way to the basement of Scott Lab, where one of my orientation sessions was held, so at least I knew one thing with respect to that lecture and I waited for ten minutes outside, as I wound up getting there early somehow. As I was waiting outside, the kids inside the classroom trickled out and they were complaining about a physics test they had just taken, which put me right in the mood for this seminar. As I was alone, the entire experience was fairly daunting, especially for my first experience at a campus talk or seminar. To add on to this, I was not only one of the only undergraduate students, but also one of the only females, except for the lecturer and a few adults students in the audience. I didn’t necessarily feel out of place, as much as I felt like everyone saw me, sitting in the front with my characteristic double denim outfit and my favorite pen.

I did not talk to anyone while at the lecture unfortunately, as I had a prior commitment I needed to attend to, after the lecture had ended but the talk was very informative. Admittedly, I didn’t understand a lot of the content, as it was certainly geared towards people with a lot of background in the area, something I quite clearly lack, but it was very interesting to hear about one perspective on our current understanding of the creation of planets that are not our own from the perspective of a new point of view, at least for me.

The seminar very much met my expectations of that type of research; the lecturer was clearly very dedicated to and passionate about the topic. I was, however, pretty surprised about how accessible the lecture was for people who didn’t have a solid background on the topic, or in my case, no background at all.

I do think that there is significant merit to being active in the academic community as an undergraduate student because it is a way to get involved in what you love, or at the least, learn a lot about a topic of interest. I also think that it can be a fantastic way to network and form meaningful bonds with people who are passionate about what they are studying, because they are giving a lecture on it, which at least in my opinion, demonstrates some level of interest in the topic.

Overall, this experience was very informative for me, even if I was way over my head with the topic material, and I hope that when I change my major this Wednesday, that my new department of Political Science, will also offer lectures such as the one I just attended.

When I was a young child, shots always scared me beyond belief. I could have won awards for the excuses I used to come up with to get out of having to get a shot while at the doctor’s office for my annual check-up. As I grew older I became much less dramatic about getting shots but finally it came time to get my first shot alone as I started preparing for flu season. I was ready to be able to tell the cashier at CVS that I already had my flu shot done, instead of the awkward moment of pretending to contemplate getting my flu shot done.

I called into Wilce to set up an appointment to get my flu shot. I was very familiar with this process as I have been there earlier in the year when I had bronchitis. I did not have to wait too long for an appointment as all I needed was my aforementioned flu shot. Once I got there for my appointment I also did not need to wait too long for my shot.

At long last, it was time for my dreaded flu shot. I had been mentally psyching myself up all day, playing my hype playlists on Spotify to take my mind off the endeavor I had ahead. I went back to get my shot and I kept telling myself that I was ready to get this shot and that it was going to save me pain in the long run.

In the minutes before my flu shot I had definitively decided that I wasn’t going to cry and prove to myself that I was mature enough to do this, as a self-respecting 18 year old college student. To be completely honest, the sheer amount of Herculean strength I demonstrated in pretending that the shot didn’t hurt was beyond admirable.

Overall, my experience was fine. I was just getting a simple flu shot, no matter how it may seem through my dramatics that would put William Shakespeare to shame. My experience was good, as have been my past experiences at Wilce have been. Of course with a student body population of 60,000 there are times when it feels like you are being lost in the bureaucracy, which is an obvious and somewhat unavoidable flaw in the health care system at Ohio State.

I think that the biggest area of growth and necessary support service are found within the same area, insurance. As someone who is privileged enough to firstly, have a good insurance plan, and secondly, have said insurance plan covered by my parents, going to the doctor does not cause me any financial anxiety like I know it can cause my peers. Even the Ohio State insurance plan can be a financial burden for some students and when we have such close living situations where sickness spreads so rapidly it is irresponsible to have such high costs for medical support. This being said, Ohio State does do a good job, for the most part with this, but like my fear of shots, there is always room for improvement and maturity.

During high school I was very involved with Model United Nations my junior and senior year, and I loved it. Naturally, I wanted to continue it in college because I felt like I didn’t have enough time to truly reach my full potential as a Model UN legend. With this in mind, I searched out the Model UN team at Ohio State before coming to campus and started counting down the days until the first meeting.

Finally, after waiting a few months from graduation to the first day of classes, it was time for the first meeting of CCWA(Collegiate Council on World Affairs) and I was nervous. Would the group be a lot of exclusive, pretentious politics nerds? Would they not be serious about Model UN? Would they like me? With a pit of anxiety in my stomach, I walked into Derby Hall, prepared for the worst. Somehow, I had managed to drag my poor roommate with me so I wouldn’t have to go alone.

To my immense surprise, ninety minutes later, I walked out of that small room in the basement of the political science building, with a long list of things I loved about the club. In fact, I was so excited about this that I immediately called my parents to excitedly ramble on about how much fun I had, ignoring the fact that it was past 9 pm on a Wednesday night and all my parents wanted to do was sleep.

I decided that CCWA was going to be my big extracurricular that I dedicate an inordinate amount of time to, make it my brand, if you will. As a result of 6 weeks of attending every meeting, competing at mocks, and a lot of late nights researching, I was selected to attend our first, highly competitive conference of the year, CMUNNY, held at Columbia University in New York City. After my initial excitement of getting to spend a weekend in the best city in the world, the normal pre-conference anxiety set in as I started to fear whether or not they had made a bad choice in bringing me.

Pre-conference I did a lot of research and late night crisis arc freak out sessions so I would finally be prepared to travel with seven other delegates, who I now consider to be my friends, and compete. Four days of no sleep, too much coffee, and an unhealthy amount of stress later, we were done with the conference. I didn’t do as well as I would have liked but I learned a lot of important things along the way.

CCWA will take up a lot of my time, without a doubt, but I don’t mind. I truly see myself succeeding in the organization and hopefully, one day in the future, being on leadership because seeing how hard leadership worked to make the best-weekend-of-college-so-far a reality truly inspired me to want to help bring that experience to as many people as possible. Which brings me to where I am now, writing about my experience in the best club on campus, after only getting home eight hours prior to my first class and desperately trying not to fall asleep, but ready for the future of me in CCWA.

The delegation we brought to the conference

The girls of Model U.N.

For me, as someone who has always been mathematically challenged, to put it lightly, seeking help for my upcoming Math 1151 midterm was a simple choice. I think that in education there is certainly a stigma around seeking help, especially in my high school, where saying you had a tutor was akin to saying you supported our rival high school. This being acknowledged, seeking help is what saved from a few unsatisfactory grades in my entire career is a student. Personally, I don’t subscribe to this stigma because I feel that the alternative, failing, is far more “shameful” than admitting that we all have our strengths and weaknesses. For me, I know that where I struggle in understanding the intricacies of derivatives and integrals, I make up for it in my unfailing enthusiasm to read and analyze pieces of legislation with docket numbers so long they’ve invented new area codes.

In general, Ohio State has a large support base for students who are seeking academic aid, as exemplified by the Math and Statistics Learning Center (MSLC) on-campus, that provides excellent tutoring for no additional cost after your tuition. The MSLC, combined with other tutoring opportunities and the ample time that professors give for office hours has really impacted my grasp on the concepts we’re learning in calculus this semester. A major benefit to having all of these opportunities is that if I don’t understand the concept in the way the professor has taught it, there are so many other people, all with varying ways of explaining and understanding that specific topic. At the MSLC, there is definitely an aura that allows students to ask questions without the fear of appearing “dumb”, something I know everybody, including myself, deals with, especially during lectures, when there’s two hundred other people and their only focus is on your question, if you can muster up the courage to ask it.

I think that once students can take the first steps in admitting that they can’t succeed without help sometimes, it can really put into perspective how attainable success is. Without a shadow of a doubt, having this myriad of opportunities to ask questions and learn from our own mistakes in such a good environment has incredible impacts on both our self-esteem and self-efficacy, especially with regards to future success in the professional world and beyond. Something I really appreciated about the MSLC was how we had to come up with questions ourselves, which sometimes differs from office hours where you can just listen to the questions other people have and learn from that.

In my future, I would love to tutor in the subjects I’m really passionate about because when you’re so passionate about these topics it sometimes allows you to become complacent with your understanding of the topics. When you have to explain a topic to someone else, especially when they don’t understand it the way that you do, it challenges you to reevaluate how well you actually understand the material, and as a result of this, you end up learning just as much as the person you’re helping.

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