Hi My name is Kristen Wood and I am a student currently attending The Ohio State University. I am a freshman in the Mechanical Engineering pre-major, and I am in the Humanitarian Engineering Scholars program. At tOSU, I am involved in the Society for Women in Engineering, and I play women’s club water polo. In high school, I had two internships with Abbott in their High School STEM intern program, I was captain of my schools water polo team, and I was heavily involved with our FIRST Robotics Team.
My top 5 Strengths:
- Discipline
Getting discipline as my top strength makes a lot of sense for me because I thrive when I have structure. I create routines within my day and I try to keep the space around me organized. I like to create a plan and I struggle when I am not organized.
- Activator
Activator is closely tied to discipline for me in the aspect that I like having a plan for action and I enjoy the beginning part of a project. I am good at starting projects that interest me, but sometimes I lose interest after starting a project, and become interested with other new projects. I notice this trait when writing papers because I can start writing easily, but I have trouble editing and proofreading. This trait also causes me to speak my mind a lot and to be impatient.
- Restorative
This trait makes sense for me since I want to go into engineering. Restorative deals with being good at identifying and fixing problems. Often times I give my friends advice about their problems and I enjoy taking on new projects or hobbies.
- Empathy
This trait helps me be good at seeing situations from others’ point of view and I’m aware of others emotions. Something I found interesting about this trait is that in the application portion of the report, there was a recommendation for individuals with empathy to pair with an individual with activator because individuals with activator are willing to make the best decision even if it mean sometimes hurting individuals feelings. I personally feel that having both empathy and activator as my top traits can be helpful, but also leads to internal conflict after I’ve made decisions because I take individuals feelings into account after taking action.
- Individualization
This trait deals with understanding how people are different and what unique talents they bring to the table. I find that this trait is important to my leadership style because within teams or groups I find myself trying to figure out what individuals fit best into certain roles, and helping them use those talents in a way that will benefit the group.