Real World Research

Musically Inclined

My favorite hobby of all time is rock climbing. I commonly frequent Smith Rock and The Garden, since they are close by and amazing places to chill out and enjoy a day in nature. During the off-season (late-autumn and winter term) one would most likely see me working on some of my favorite projects at McAlexander Fieldhouse. I am also very passionate about music. I have played trombone since 6th grade, and continued playing for my first two years at OSU in the symphonic band. I enjoy both of these hobbies a lot, because I get to explore very different communities of people, while sharing some spectacular moments.

Making An Impact

I decided to change my major during my first year at OSU from Chemistry to BRR, because I started to realize that I wanted my education to better reflect “real life” scientific inquiry and exploration. Since changing my focus more to scientific research, I have realized how much of an impact it can have on human health. Right now, my research focus is on investigating the effects of Selenium Supplementation in Weened-Beef Cows on their humoral immunity towards certain pathogens. This can greatly impact society, as it may begin to inform scientists of certain benefits, which may even potentially apply to humans.

My Future Self

This year I was admitted into the Leadership Academy, a program offered through the College of Ag Sciences that offers students the chance to learn about and practice professional development. In this program, I was assigned a mentor to periodically talk about my steps toward achieving my personal development goals. The way this program is designed ensures that students are consistently thinking about how to control their own self-improvement. I think that as we start to forget about self-improvement, we begin to stagnate as individuals because it requires some thought, and many college students, myself included, are sometimes bad at making it a priority. The areas of character development that I have been working on are networking with faculty, motivating/leading others, and emotional intelligence. I believe that by carrying out simple steps to improve these areas I will greatly enhance my overall experience at OSU, and increase opportunities for myself in the future, professionally and personally.

Medicinal Principles

In five years, I see myself in medical school working towards my MD/PhD. As I discussed earlier, since changing my major, I have been active in undergraduate research on campus. I value the opportunity the College of Ag Sciences has given me, because a large part of medicine is research. I would even say that research is the foundation of medicine, because we would not have the great medical knowledge we do today without objective, peer-reviewed, and thorough research studies. I see my time spent going through the BRR curriculum as an opportunity to become more knowledgeable about the process of research and how it may apply to some of the medical practices we use today.

School Hard, Play Hard

My biggest piece of advice for any freshman at OSU is to actively look for things to make yourself more well-rounded an individual. I would say that it is important to be ambitious in your studies and work really hard; although, a lot of people don’t know that school is a balance beam, and if you spend all of your time studying, you are bound to fall off. Just make sure to have fun and enjoy life.