- My STEP signature project was an internship with Campus Service Officers, the place I work. As Campus Service Officers, we strive to improve and maintain the overall security of the Ohio State campus by making sure OSU properties are secure, providing a first response to medical emergencies, alerting the OSU Department of Public Safety of criminal or suspicious activity, advising the proper authority on safety and maintenance needs on campus, and building relationships with the community at large. My project really focused on finding the most effective route for our nightly building checks and compiling statistics to determine which buildings had the most security issues throughout my internship.
- During my STEP internship, I realized how much I want to make a difference in the world, and I realized that I could really make this impact if I went into law enforcement. With everything going on in the world involving law enforcement recently, I was able to experience first-hand what it felt like to be on the other side. As an organization, we pride ourselves with being able to connect with students as we are all students ourselves. However, these past few months there was a disconnect. Especially last semester when we were patrolling east of high, many students really didn’t appreciate our presence. I really struggled with how to make my fellow peers understand that our presence wasn’t to cause them any trouble, but rather to help them if they got into trouble. With this in mind, I really feel like I know that the biggest impact that I have to being part of the solution is to help them understand where I’m coming from. The best way that I know to do that that I’ve realized from this internship is to go into law enforcement in some manner and show them the good.
- I believe that the interactions that really led me to this transformation was really with the public and the people I met at my internship. A lot of the time when we patrolled on campus even, people almost seemed like they didn’t want us there. However, when we would actually approach them and talk to them and really show that we are here to help they would be more open-minded and we were able to have good conversations. Due to the fact that we were allowed to patrol east of High St. last semester, there were situations that occurred where we had to coordinate with CPD in order to get students the help they needed. Through these experiences, I was able to directly help students and provide them with the proper care while also improving upon my communication capabilities. Coordinating with CPD and even EMS really helped me build my communication and teamwork skills and test my abilities of being able to apply the knowledge I have gained. Being able to succeed in these scenarios really allowed me to gain confidence in my abilities to handle situations. Being able to actively patrol campus and conduct building checks allowed me to realize that I don’t want to sit in a lab all day – I want to be more proactive. I would still like to possibly do an internship in a crime lab to see if it would still interest me, but if I would be able to combine both that would be the perfect job. During this internship, I was also able to meet many people that have inspired me to go into this field of work. I made many friends and built connections with many people who have shown me what it is like to want to be the change. They have opened my eyes to the fact that there are many good people in law enforcement who really want to just protect and serve their community. Many of them are going into law enforcement or the military or themselves are police officers. They are an inspiration to me and made me realize that I owe it to myself to pursue what I love despite the criticism of others.
- This change/transformation was very significant to my life because it allowed me to really determine the career I want in the future. It also opened my eyes to the realities of going into law enforcement and the hurdles that I would probably face. It also allowed me to understand what kind of path I want to take for my career. I’m pretty confident that I don’t want to be a police officer, but I also don’t want to sit in a lab all day and analyze data. My perfect job would be a combination of those two. Therefore, I believe that I would like to be able to be a criminal investigator of some sort. I would be able to be active in the field as I would be collecting evidence and trying to piece things together, but I also would be able to use my background in biochemistry and biology as it does require scientific expertise.
