About Me

My name is Kirsten Szydlowski and I am a freshman in the STEM Exploration and Engagement Scholars program at The Ohio State University. I am from Painesville, Ohio and I went to Riverside High School. I believe that my experiences and the opportunities that my high school offered me during my time there set me up to succeed in my college and professional careers. The teachers and staff were dedicated to every single student’s success and helping them achieve their goals. My family has also been very supportive of all of my goals and aspirations throughout my life. With their support, I have been able to do very well in math and science which inspired me to pursue a degree in the STEM field.

I was first inspired to pursue a degree in Aerospace Engineering when my family took a trip to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Walking under the massive rockets and seeing the Apollo control room is when I decided I wanted to work with rockets. While the idea of becoming an astronaut and actually going into space is slightly frightening, I would not pass up an opportunity to do so if my career leads to that. However, designing and building rockets for NASA or another private company is my ultimate career goal.

During my college career, I plan on completing multiple internships and possibly studying abroad to further my experience and strengthen my resume. Comparing my skills to the requirements of the aerospace program, I believe that my hard-work and determination will help me to be able to succeed even with the large workload. The difficult classes will also prepare me for my career by challenging me and forcing me to think outside the box to come up with innovative solutions to potential problems. The challenging requirements of the program inspire me to set goals that will be challenging to complete.

Since deciding to pursue this career, I have worked hard in all of my classes to do the best I can to prepare myself for the challenging college courses and workload. My determination to succeed and my inspiration to do well and to make my family proud, will help me continue to push my own limits to be the best possible version of myself. I believe this determination helped me want to become a STEM Scholar. In high school, I had always taken the hardest possible classes, honors or AP, and I knew that I did not want college to be any different. I wanted to be a STEM EE Scholar because I wanted to be able to get to know other students pursuing the same field as me. Getting to know fellow engineers and working with them on group projects, will improve my teamwork skills which will prepare me for my career. I am excited to enter this challenging field and to prepare myself for my future career at The Ohio State University.

 

 

 

Welcome to my Honors & Scholars e-Portfolio

My name is Kirsten Szydlowski and I am a freshman pursuing a degree in Aerospace Engineering. I am in the STEM Exploration and Engagement Scholars program. My ePortfolio will highlight my academic achievements, experiences and goals for my college career at The Ohio State University. I hope to be able to look back on what I will publish here and be able to see how far I have come from my freshman year to graduation.

G.O.A.L.S.

[ “G.O.A.L.S.” is a place where students write about how their planned, current, and future activities may fit into the Honors & Scholars G.O.A.L.S.: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement. For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.

Global Awareness: Students cultivate and develop their appreciation for diversity and each individual’s unique differences. For example, consider course work, study abroad, involvement in cultural organizations or activities, etc .
Original Inquiry: Honors & Scholars students understand the research process by engaging in experiences ranging from in-class scholarly endeavors to creative inquiry projects to independent experiences with top researchers across campus and in the global community. For example, consider research, creative productions or performances, advanced course work, etc.
Academic Enrichment: Honors & Scholars students pursue academic excellence through rigorous curricular experiences beyond the university norm both in and out of the classroom.
Leadership Development: Honors & Scholars students develop leadership skills that can be demonstrated in the classroom, in the community, in their co-curricular activities, and in their future roles in society.
Service Engagement: Honors & Scholars students commit to service to the community.]

Career

[“Career” is where you can collect information about your experiences and skills that will apply to your future career.  Like your resume, this is information that will evolve over time and should be continually updated.   For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Artifacts

I have had many great experiences working in the Wonders of Our World (WOW) volunteer program. This program involves small groups of Ohio State students going to inner-city Columbus schools and teaching the students through STEM related experiments. The elementary school students that I have worked with so far have been very interested in the experiments we have done. They are curious about how things work and they ask many questions about why the things in the experiments happen. When I ask them why they think a certain thing happened, they give very creative answers that I may have never come up with. In this way, they teach me things by asking questions I cannot answer and by giving answers that offer a new perspective on the question.

Bringing science into these classrooms is important because it exposes the students to a subject that they may not learn as much about regularly. The visits allow the students to potentially become very interested in a specific experiment or problem and decide they want to learn more about it. This could potentially lead to them pursuing a future career in a science or math field. The possibility of influencing the students enough that they choose a science related career path because of an experiment we do in their classroom is very inspiring.