Diversity Event!

In my time at Ohio State I have actually attended 2 diversity events! The first one I attended was not really for the purpose of this post, because I wasn’t really extending myself into a new diverse group because the first program I attended was for explaining the Jewish tradition of “Shabbat”, and as a Jew, I am already pretty well versed in what the traditions of Shabbat are and what is done.

The reason I attended this event to being with was because I saw the poster in on my floor and saw that it was in my building, on the second floor. It interested me to go to this event as I was Jewish and I wanted to see how accurate or real the presentation/education on Shabbat would be. I wondered who would be running the event, and what parts of Shabbat they would cover. I wondered if the presenter would be Jewish person, maybe someone I knew (because a lot of Jews know each other or at least know someone they know, we call it Jewish geography).

I also kind of wanted to go to see if I would be able to add anything from the perspective of another student who was probably going to be closer to the age of the attendees then whoever the presenter would be.

When I went, it was pretty much what I expected, they talked about the food we ate and some of the traditions that a lot of people do on Shabbat. If you didn’t know, Shabbat is a weekly holiday that is celebrated starting Friday night at sundown and ends Saturday night a sundown. Many families celebrate weekly, and have different levels of observances. The overall theme of Shabbat is that it is supposed to be a day of rest because it symbolizes the last day that god took when he created the world he took 7 days, and took the last one as rest. Some people, who are more conservative aren’t allowed to use electricity, drive a car or do really any work because it is supposed to be the day of rest.

For me, I don’t typically celebrate Shabbat on a regular basis. I do celebrate more often in college than I did at home, as now I sometimes go to Hillel or Chabad on campus. I also celebrate Shabbat every week in the summer as I work at a Jewish overnight summer camp.

I was happy with my attendance of this event, although looking back at it I feel like a lot of my motivation to go was not for the right reasons. I imagine that the person who planned this event intended for it to be people who did not know much or anything about Shabbat. I went in with a more pessimistic mindset thinking the person teaching wouldn’t be very good but I was disproven and am actually very glad that these kind of events exist on campus so people are aware of my culture and traditions and can be respectful of them!

Attending a Campus Seminar

In this post I will probably seem like a normal college student, because the story of me attending my seminar presentation, starts off with procrastination. I read the description of this assignment weeks ago, and figured, they must have a seminar on campus like everyday! I don’t need to worry about this for a while! I was wrong.

The weekend before this post was due (also known as yesterday) I checked the psychology major website for me to find a seminar to attend so that I could write my reflection on it for this post. To my dismay the only seminar I could find for the while week was on Wednesday (the day the post is due) and it was during one of my classes. So that seemed like a no to me.

Sad that I was unable to to attend a seminar for my own major, I started the search for a different seminar I could attend. I started looking on the STEM EE website, which is recommended in the assignment description for this post. luckily I was able to find a seminar that fit beautifully into my schedule for the following day.

Due to my lack of planning I attended this seminar without any friends. When I walked into the room I quickly noticed that I was one of the youngest people in the room. Luckily it was in a big lecture hall so I didn’t feel like I got noticed too much as it was a big crowd. Even though it was a big crowd I still felt very out of place.

The only person I talked to while I was there was the nice old man who sat next to me. I’m pretty sure he was Scottish because he had a cool accent. He asked me how and why I had come to the seminar and Im pretty sure he laughed at me knowing what was going to happen to me.

When I tell you that I did not understand a single word of this presentation I am not joking. The title of the presentation was “Phenylalanine Hydroxylase: Probing a Catalytic Cycle with EPR Spectroscopy”. The words that I know from that title were “a” and “with”. So once I saw that being projected I knew I was going to be having a fun hour listening to things that I had no idea what they were.

I “sneakily” took a few more pictures of the slides as the presentation wore on but the visuals did not help me much as the atomic structures and graphs looked much more like magnetic toys than anything other significant to me.

In summary I think this was a very bad choice of seminars for me to go to, but It has gotten me interested in seeing other seminars, maybe in my department. I think that seminar lectures in psychology will be more doable for me as I have studied them more recently and the last time I studied chemistry was almost 4 years ago.

Trying a Campus Resource

When looking through the list of possible campus resources I was surprised by many of them, I had not heard of over half of them and was unaware that so many things are available to me as an Ohio State student. As I looked through my options, the one that caught my eye was the Campus Career Center. This seemed extra helpful to me because I know the areas that I ma interested in but I am not sure how they can work together for me to become a career outside of college major or minor.

Once I decided that I was going to then Career Counseling Center I checked out their website, which may I say, is the worst thing about this resource. It was very poorly organized and I did not find any of the information I needed until quite a few moments of searching. Once I was able to find how to make an appointment (I would have to call), I wrote down the number because it was too late to call at this point.

Over the next 3 days I tried calling a few times and even left 2 voicemails but every time I called they told me the line was busy or that they were closed for the day, even if it was in the hours they said to call in. This was frustrating so I decided to risk it and go all the way to the Younkin Success Center which is a walk and a half from .my door. It was a big risk to go without an appointment as they only take 4 walk ins every day and you have to go at specific times and may have to wait a long time for an open consultant.

Luckily there was one walk in slot left and I didn’t have to wait more than 20 min to get into my meeting. When I checked in they gave me a sheet to fill out where I put things down like my major, possible minors and interests.

Once I talked to my consultant for a little bit about how I found my interests he had me take a few online quizzes to see if they aligned with my thoughts, and I was also able to pull up scores that from a test I had taken in high school about future career paths.

Once analyzing my mixture of quizzes and data he was able to give me advice on what kinds of paths I could take and more people I could go talk to about that. Because I had a walk in appointment my time had run out quickly and it was time for him to move onto his next student.

Of all of the posts we have done so far- I did not see myself being excited or even benefiting from trying the things on campus. But to my pleasant surprise, I was wrong and I feel that my experience definitely will help me in the future. I will probably returning to see if I can get more direction as I was cut off by time in my first visit.

Trying a Student Org!

Walking through the student involvement fair as an already overwhelmed new college student was not a relaxing experience. Texting my friend to meet up with her so I wasn’t walking around alone while simultaneously trying to navigate my way though the endless wave of club tables and other confused students, also not a relaxing experience. But overall trying to find and choose a few clubs that I could really see myself getting involved in, terrified me.

I walked past table after table trying to find something I was interested in. It took me awhile to figure it out but I realized that the oval was organized into sections and that I probably wasn’t going to find the club for me in the section for Asian culture clubs. Once I found myself with a friend, and in a section with clubs I could find interest in, I was able to put my names down for a few clubs, things I could really see myself doing. There were a few other clubs I saw but ended up walking past due to the crowd sanding there or that if my friends kept walking I feared I would lose them forever in the deep-sea of people. One of the clubs I walked by was Ukulele Club, which seemed really cool.

I have played the ukulele since my freshman year of high school but I’m not really a big fan of playing or singing in front of people, which explains why I passed on it at first. But hours and days passed and I kept thinking about Ukulele club and I realized that this was probably something I wanted to do if was I was thinking about it so much

Once I realized this, I looked up the club and emailed the president of the club. She responded quickly and in the same humor that I used in my email and gave me the info on the next meeting. I was very excited to go but also very nervous as I was going to arrive alone and I would know no one there. Spoiler alert: it turned out okay. I walked in and sat in between two people who turned out to be very nice and I also talked to the girl in front of me for a while before we started playing.

I really liked going to the club because I was able to meet a bunch of new and cool people and we all had the common interest of playing the ukulele! I really liked the student leaders in the club, they had a very relaxed environment which matched a lot of people in the clubs vibes as well. I could definitely see myself being a leader in this club, I really liked all the leaders and members of the club and they were very relatable.

Coming to this club once a week will have to take priority when I am thinking of time management because this is only for one hour once a week so I will have to keep in mind to not push things off until Thursday nights.

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience at ukulele club and I will definitely be returning.

 

Academic Support

Like many kids coming from high school to college, many of us have never asked for much help on school work. Unless it was a quick question from a teacher , a writing lab for college essays or an ACT tutor, I had never really gotten outside help before. At least thats how it was for me; I never sought after much help as high school classes didn’t seem to challenge me to a point where I felt like I needed a tutor or an extra layer of help.

New things and transitions came in college, and with that I had many changes in my study habits, work ethic and entire schedule. Ohio State has so many good resources we as students can use to help us get on track and stay that way. When I started learning things in my calc class that I had never learned before, it- shockingly- became much harder for me to keep up and understand everything that was happening in a lecture with over 200 students. Luckily twice a week I have my recitation class where I am able to be in a smaller group and ask more questions and get direct answers. Even then- the class is only an hour and my TA will have lots of work to get though and cannot always get to every question or spend lots of time on each one. When I found multiple questions in my homework that I was unable to even start the process of how to complete the question – thats when I knew I should try the MSLC (Math and Statistics Learning Center) to get some extra help and attention to get all my questions answered and make sure I have a good grasp on all my material.

Because I had never really asked or received help like this before I was kind of scared to go and especially to go so early in the year I did feel kind of weak. This did not stop me from going though because I knew that receiving a lower score on a test or quiz would be even more ego- damaging than getting some extra help.

First off what I used was the website of the MSLC. On the website I was able to find my specific course (Math 1150) and was able to find an Exam 1 “review guide” which comes in perfect timing for my first midterm next week! Once I complete many of these problems I will have a grasp on what I do and do not know and will have a list of example problems that I need help on.Image result for cockins hall osu

Cockins Hall- where my Math lab is located Pic creds

I think that In the future I would love to be a tutor. Starting even in middle school I started doing some tutoring programs. I did a peer tutoring program for my math class as well as tutoring elementary aged kids in math when I was in middle school.

Overall the resources at Ohio State are here for us to be able to improve ourselves an do the most we can to be sucessful.