Sophomore year has been a crazy one! It flew by just as quickly as freshman year, and I can’t believe that I’m half done with college.
This year has been a ride for me. I was able to branch out, find leadership positions, make new friends, and discover more about what I want for my life. My year started last summer. After my freshman year, I decided to sublease and stay in Columbus to conduct neuroscience research with Dr. Glenn Lin on the development of small novel molecules for the treatment for neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Gulf War Illness. My specific project over the summer consisted of a 9-5 job dealing with Gulf War Illness mice. We conducted our research in hopes of finding positive effects of our novel molecules on Gulf War Illness Symptoms. Lucky we’ve had some great results; however, the study is still in progress. I was able to present this study and our results at the Spring Undergraduate Research Festival, which was my first time presenting research! I hope to get more opportunities to present and conduct research in the future. As such, this summer I will be branching off from the Gulf War Illness study to personally conduct an Early Life Stress Study and how our novel compound may impact early life stress related symptoms such as anxiety and depression.
Also starting last summer, I began Volunteering at the Grant Medical Center and taking the Grant Emergency Medical Technician Class. The Class was 4 hours twice a week in the evenings with clinicals and ride times on the weekends. It was a lot of work, and it extended until the end of fall semester. However, the program was very thorough and educational, and I’m happy to say that I am now a certified EMT! My spring semester has been quite busy, so I hope to find and start EMT positions this summer!
Next, at the start of Fall semester I decided to start my own club here on campus called Remote Area Medical at The Ohio State University. We are a branch of Remote Area Medical (RAM), a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free life changing healthcare in the form of weekend clinics around the nation. They provide free dental, medical, and vision care to anyone who shows up. My biggest ambition with the club is to host a RAM clinic in Columbus in the Summer of 2020 and a select team of members in the club and I have been working towards that goal. I’m happy to say the progress is coming along swimmingly, and I have high hopes of reaching my goal. Furthermore, the club also provides great volunteering and learning experiences for our members by going of RAM trips to clinics hosted around the nation. This past year I have been on 4 of these trips and amassed over 100 hours of volunteering on these trips alone. They are a great way to get meaningful and moving volunteer experience. The interactions I’ve had with physicians, dentists, social workers, and the patients have solidified my desire to not only go into into the medical field but beyond, to change how medicine is practiced in the United States today.
Finally, this past spring semester I was also offered the Co-director position of the Neuroscience Ambassadors program. It has been such an honor working with a group of like minded and driven neuroscience ambassadors for the past year, so this opportunity to take over the program, select, and lead a new group Neuroscience Ambassadors is humbling. We have already hosted 12 open houses to recruit prospective OSU Neuroscience students and to answer questions of incoming freshmen. We also have conducted over 100 interviews to select around 50 new ambassadors to uphold the community we have in our Neuroscience Major. The community amongst members is what makes this major more than just a set of classes. It makes it a support net, a stepping stone, and a home. It has enriched my college experience, and as a Co-director of the Ambassador program I look forward to furthering that community.
That has been my sophomore year. It’s been full of joy, sadness, triumph, stress, pleasure, and failures; however, I know that through this process I am improving. I am becoming a better person, wiser, and more understanding of others and myself. I’m am grateful for the amazing year that I’ve had and I look forward to many more great years to come.