My name is Ian Weiner. I grew up in Wooster, Ohio, a small town where farming was the main occupation. I loved Small Town, USA though, and with such a small community I was able to make great friendships with my classmates, teachers, and teammates. I was a very athletic student in high school participating in cross country, basketball, and track throughout my four years, all of which taught me great skills that I value today. I excelled in school, maintaining a 4.0 every year, which is something I pride myself on greatly. I knew I wanted to go into a STEM field because, unlike my classmates, calculus, and all other math came very easily to me, but English syntax and grammar in general, were very difficult for me. Oh, and both my parents are Ohio State alums, so I’m a life-long Buckeye and I am very excited to start my own journey here!

I am planning on majoring in Actuarial Science, finishing in three years, and then pursuing an MBA in Finance. I hope that by the time my years are up at OSU I have completed at least two of the Actuarial Exams and had as many internships. I will not allow myself to graduate without completing these two goals, and hopefully I will have three of each done when graduation comes around. I had the privilege of being able to take Calculus 1-3 in high school and I developed quite an affinity for it, so I knew I wanted to do something strictly mathematical. I settled on Actuarial Science after many hours of researching job patterns, expected job growth, salary, employee happiness, and basically any other statistic I could find. This might sound overboard or too time consuming for some freshman, but this is how I think and make decisions, and so far, I am loving my choice of Actuarial Science and cannot wait to see where it takes me in the future.

My long-term best-case-scenario goal is to either be the CFO of a large company, or create and own my own company in the future. I want one of these jobs because I feel I am much better at being my own boss than a regular employee. Being CFO would mean I would only have one or two people to report to, and I feel like I would be OK with that, especially with those one or two superiors being the very top of the company. As the owner of my own business I of course would have no one to report to other than myself, which is very appealing to me. I had the special opportunity to work as a Lab Research Intern at the Ohio Agriculture Research and Development Center (OARDC), which is an OSU run facility, for three summers from 2014-2016. As a Research Intern I helped the graduate students in my lab conduct their research projects they would later use to create their doctoral thesis. This work experience taught me a great many things: how to conduct research, how to work in small or large groups, how to share resources and data with other people, and even the bare basics of having a job such as showing up on time, etc. I also learned that I wanted to be in a position that my Lab Head was in. He was respected by all in the lab and nearly everything that needed approval had to go through him first, and I knew that I wanted to be the guy that was at the top of the rung rather than being the guy on the bottom.

As I briefly mentioned before sports have been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. Watching sports on TV was a bonding experience with my family, playing sports throughout my life was a bonding experience with my teammates and friends, and playing sports was a huge factor in me growing up/becoming a “man” per-say. Sports taught me many valuable life lessons such as dedication, personal drive, the ability to rebound from failure, and leadership to name a few. At OSU I plan on still participating in sports, just maybe not as competitively as I once did. I am also going to look for more leadership opportunities at OSU than I did in high school because I want to develop those skills more as I will need them if I intend to succeed in my field.

If you have any more questions concerning me, my major, or any of my past experiences do not hesitate to ask!