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.