Interview Project

This project entailed interviewing three different people: an upperclassman, a teaching assistant, and a professor to obtain knowledge that I can put to practice during my undergraduate career and in the future. The upperclassman, teaching assistant, and professor, I interviewed were third year STEM Scholar Emerson Collin, Calculus 2 teaching assistant Youcef Hamida, and sports history professor Marc Horger, respectively.

To interview these individuals, I first had to contact them. Most of the time, one would have to contact them in several different ways. I contacted the upperclassman by email, the teaching assistant in person, and the professor by email after reading his article. Emerson Collin, the upperclassman, was very easy to find thanks to the amazing Jorge Eduardo Mendoza that provided us with a list of many third year STEM Scholars. I contacted Mr. Youcef Hamida through my Calculus recitation after class. Finally, I used the Scopus searching tool found in the OSU library main page, to find articles written by professors. The purpose of reading scientific articles was to have an intelligent conversation with the professor. However, after searching tirelessly through many math papers and contacting the professors who wrote the respective article, I had either received no response or their schedule was full. However, I knew that my sports history professor Marc Horger was a reliable individual that I could contact.

To begin with, let us start with the person who I could relate the most, Emerson Collin. Emerson, from the Seattle area, is a STEM EE Scholar that has an aspiration to be an actuary, just as I do. We talked about the many actuarial exams one has to pass to become an actuary. Emerson has passed a couple and told me to “put my time in”. He said that for every hour the actuary test is, one should study for one hundred hours. The first actuary test is three hours long. Now, I am decent at math, but even one who is not that great in that field would probably know that it is a lot of studying. After that, we discussed internships, and he said that the companies who talk to the actuarial science club will give one a quick interview, however, it is unlikely to get a follow-up about an internship without passing at least the first actuarial science exam. We also discussed his passion for actuarial science and clubs he is involved in. He highly recommended me to join clubs because when one is not studying, which is seemingly rare, one then has a group of friends to spend that extra time with. He gave me advice on study habits, dealing with frustrating people, and other normal college situations. Just as an aside, I also asked him what music he enjoys to listen to and he responded with “The Black Eyed Peas” so that can be taken for what it is worth.

Youcef Hamida was the next individual that I interviewed. I learned quite a bit about the process of graduate school. He said that one of the best experiences is interacting with his professors on a daily basis. He says they all treat him like he is an equal member of their society. He also gave some advice for doing homework and studying. First, he watches a lecture of the material about to be learned online before the actual lecture. Then, he attends and takes notes from the actual lecture. Finally, he reads the book that the lecture covers. Personally, I do not know if I can implement this with my studies because I have multiple classes with multiple books with multiple lectures so I lean towards not using this studying approach, at least for this semester. Mr. Hamida is mainly responsible for research with his professor and teaching the recitation. It sounds like a heavy work-load considering he also has to attend many classes. In terms of recommendations for undergraduate research, he said he regretted not doing it, however, he highly recommended for me to find a professor that I like and ask if I can go do undergraduate research with him.

Now, before I was able to do my final interview with a professor, I had to find one of his or her articles to add an extra element to discuss with. To find these articles, I went to the OSU library website. Through that, I navigated to the Scopus website where I was able to find any kind of article with filters like the author, the abstract, key words, and many other fields. Although it was easy to find these articles, the articles were more than just a difficult read. Ten pages of technical, high-level, confusing diction that is hard to understand would be an understatement to some of the papers I had read. Although, I read them to the best of my abilities and contacted the corresponding professor. Unfortunately, all the professors I contacted either ignored my email or found there was no room in their schedule to talk. But, fortunately, one of the professors I had for class seemed to be very approachable and allowed for me to talk to him after finding one of his articles on Scopus.

Now that I found the article, going in to interview with Professor Marc Horger was all set. We started by discussing the article. For a quick summary, the article described how Harvard basketball in the early 1900s was essentially nonexistent and he was trying to explain why this was the case. Some reasons were due to the competition with hockey during the winter as well as basketball being considered a violent sport which aggravated many people at the time. So I asked specific questions like “how was basketball disbanded but not football, based on violence?”, “Was hockey a real, huge contributor to why they get rid of basketball at Harvard?” and other questions pertaining to his article. Then, I asked him about undergraduate research to which he responded that he is no longer in the history department and that I would have to go to the higher individuals there to receive any information on it. I, then, asked him how to study, to which he sarcastically answered “study the notes”. Blunt, but not wrong. Finally, I asked him questions about current sports discussions such as the Colin Kaepernick situation and how that compares to Muhammad Ali, Kevin Durant going to the Golden State Warriors, and other similar topics. It went well overall, until the Durant discussion took place. There was no real change in opinion between the two of us and the conversation lasted at least fifteen minutes. But, overall, I had a very good discussion with Professor Horger and gained one more connection.

Connections are always the key to gaining an advantage among the rest. This project allowed that opportunity for me. I gained a lot of advice to succeed in school through different study habits and ways of doing homework. In addition, I received several different pieces of advice for undergraduate research. Not only did I get helpful information from the interviews, I also got valuable information from the process of contacting the people to interview. Also, I got experience navigating the Scopus website to find credible pieces of information very easily. In the end, it was a great experience and I gained valuable information and valuable connections throughout the project process.

Election Results

In light of the recent election, it is important to discuss how this impacts everyone around the world but, in my case, more specifically, discuss how this impacts people in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields.  As of the time I have written this article, Donald J. Trump is the President-elect of the United States of America. Obviously, the majority of the country found that Trump’s policies and plan for the country will be America’s best option for the next four years and I would just like to make out a few points in how this affect workers in the STEM field. First and foremost, saying that Global Warming is a hoax by the Chinese is very worrying to say the least. There are multiple scientific reports to prove that Global Warming does exist and if nothing is done about it, Global Warming can only make our environment worse (http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/). The environment is also declining in quality due to the use of coal and oil. Trump’s argument that it will keep the jobs of coal workers in a fine argument. However, more research towards new energy sources will eventually create more jobs anyway while also improving the environment. America got here today because of research and I hope that Trump does not abandon such research.

On a completely different note, we, as a nation, have to stand together as citizens of the United States. I was recently near a protest against Donald Trump. I did not participate in said protest but it is just ridiculous at this point: people genuinely upset that a man won the presidential election yet did not vote. Many of the people I had talked to at the protest did not vote which confused me. Would one want to vote if one cared about who will be the president of the United States? In any case, the election is done and over with and I have seen many people get so riled up over something they cannot fix. At this point, we have to stop yelling and complaining, and start to focus on what we, individually can do to change and help society: donations, funding, community service, etc. Other than that, we can have a discussion similar to this four years from now.

About Me

BROOOOO

Hello all, Pedja Troca here, and this page is intended to give a little insight as to who I am and everything that comes with that. I am the son of a Serbian father and a Bosnian mother. I am the brother to my one and only sibling: my younger sister. I was born in the United States and grew up apart of my life in North Olmsted, Ohio and later moved when I was five to Lakewood, Ohio. This is where I spent the rest of my life, at least as of now. I graduated from Lakewood High School in 2016 and I am currently attending the Ohio State University for a major in actuarial science.

My family is one of the things that makes me truly strong and why I try so hard in anything and everything that I do. When I was growing up, one of my first cousins, who I see quite frequently, was diagnosed with severe autism. I understood that something always seemed off about him but it never really seemed to bother me. Right now, he still acts the same exact way as he did when we were growing up. But that’s the problem, the same exact way. I still love him all the same, regardless. That is why I have never judged anyone no matter what the circumstance. I thought that was bad enough, however, in the fall of 2012, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I did not know how to react. My initial reaction was that this was something our family had to get through, but then questions swirled in my head: “What if the surgery goes wrong?”, “What if chemotherapy is too much for her?”, “What if it is too late?”, etc.  I learned that there are some things you can control and some things you cannot control. I did what I could for my grandma, but I left everything else to the professionals and the adults. Luckily, god smiled upon our family and my grandma is, as of 2016, officially, cancer-free! If that was not bad enough, two different cousins of mine had divorced (with children who are less than two years old), my father was laid off, and, most recently, my second cousin, who I am also very close with, had testicular cancer. A question always in my mind is “Why my family?” whenever one of these situations pop up. I can only control what I can control. Anything else that is out of my hands, I just have to persevere through it and be strong and do anything possible in my power to help.

School was never a thing I was interested in until the third grade. My third grade teacher was the meanest person I think I have ever come across. There were so many rules and regulations that came with her class. I was held back after school for an extra ten to thirty minutes everyday. This was when I had to take advantage of school because I thought, originally, school was something I attended to waste my time. Because I was being forced to stay at school, I had to do something with my spare time, so I studied a little bit more. However, there still was no real motivation for me being at school until I had a long talk with my teacher. She asked me “How do you want to be remembered?”. I had no idea what she meant and I did not know how to respond. She then followed that up by saying something to the effect of “I do not know if you have it in you to become successful.”. That was all the motivation I needed. I just needed somebody to prove wrong. Also, I did not want to be remembered as being a failure. So, since then, I did a lot better at school. That is all well and good, however, I did not have a passion for school. I was motivated in school but I never had a real passion for any subject until the fifth grade when my teacher saw I was fairly good at mathematics. He saw that it came easy to me but did not understand why I did not care for it. So, he took me under his wing and we did personal math lessons together. I finally found a passion in math.

Since then, I have been on the grind to find an occupation that suits me in the math field and have continued success in it. This is why I decided to major in actuarial science. This is a field that needs an expertise in mathematics as well as a continued interest in the subject. Not only this, there is also a lot of communication needed to make sure everything going on in terms of making sure everyone in the company knows of the plans of the insurance company or the bank, and where I am from, Cleveland, it is pretty hard not to have good communication skills. Now I am attending the Ohio State University and I am also a STEM Scholar. This program is fantastic and allows one to hone their skills and give back to the community. I will continue to strive for excellence and continue to become the best person I can possibly be.