A Work; In Progress

Preface: This blog accurately tells the story of my life because it is late (Sorry!!!!)

First off, thank you for taking the time and having the interest to read this post when there are so many other more interesting life stories to read in our class. I’ll start my story off at my freshmen year of high school. I was a polar opposite of what I am today; shy, quiet, not as adventurous. I had a few friends but none that were really my close friends. I went to class, hung out with my guy friends at school, went to marching band, and then just went home to do my homework. I didn’t really hang out with many people outside of school nor did anything else besides just school work.

Sophomore year things changed. Classes got harder, I for whatever reason increased the number of classes I was taking, and I didn’t have class with a lot of my friends anymore so I didn’t really get to see them. A lot of the stress definitely took its toll on me and my grades. However, that year, I joined Key Club (a school service group) and Student Council. I started to meet a few more people and started to develop myself as a leader. I had also taken a year off from band so Key Club was a nice way to see my friends that were in band as well as a way to see them outside of school.

Junior year things changed a whole 180. I joined the water polo, track, and tennis teams. Even though I sucked at the latter two, I loved water polo. Besides the actual sport itself, I was given a brotherhood that spent 16 hours together in practice alone and even hung out afterwards. I rejoined band and made new friends with the class below me that I didn’t meet the last time I was in band. One of my initial memories of that year was when one of my band friends said “hey want to come hang out after practice today?” because until them, I didn’t really hang out with high school friends outside of school. That year was also the first time I went to the Homecoming dance, Prom, other school events, and any of the basketball or football games (yeah the sports fanatic me). I never went before because I was super self conscious for whatever reason. I was also moving up in leadership roles and more of the teachers started to notice me individually.

Senior year was the perfect way to finish off high school. My Relay for Life team raised the highest donation total in high school history, my NHS committee for the blood drive placed in the city in percentage of donors for the first time, I was playing regular varsity minutes after only one year on the team for water polo, and somehow I was on Homecoming Court and Prom Court. I never saw that kind of an ending to high school after starting out being so quiet and shy. I think it was fitting that our graduation song was “For Good”.

High school truly allowed me to grow out of my shell, become a better person and friend, and gave me the opportunity to develop myself as a leader. This was a huge set up for the next stage of my life, college. I had two colleges in mind, the University of Cincinnati and of course The Ohio State University. Many of my best friends from water polo were applying to OSU which pushed me to even though I was dead set on going to UC for a while but I thought I would give OSU a chance. Towards the end of my senior year, I found out I was accepted into the Mount Leadership Society Scholars. Later I would find out that even though I applied to Bio Sci Scholars, our scholar’s director read my essay, which was about leadership that I had done in high school, and decided I would be a better fit for Mount. Additionally, my friends took me up to Ohio State on April 25^th, 2010 to show me the campus. I was so unprepared for my college search, took the ACT on the last day, didn’t really do any visits or research, so I didn’t really know what to expect. At the end of their make shift tour, they took me to the top of Thompson and that was where I decided I wanted to go to this school. Oh here is the kicker; those friends were friends I made through Key Club…

Still reading? I owe you ice cream if you haven’t fallen asleep yet…

My first year of college was ROUGH. I thought I wanted to be an eye doctor despite how competitive it is. That was really just a decision I made for my parents and not myself. I didn’t live in the same building as the other Mount kids. On the contrary, I lived in a really small building so all of the friends I thought I would make, didn’t exist. Like we had 12 kids on our side of the floor…. Also our building was on the extreme opposite of Halloran House. Additionally, I was super home sick and kept going home, missing out on making friends during the weekend. I didn’t have anyone to help me make that transition to college so my study habits sucked and my first quarter grades were just as bad. After fall quarter, I seriously considered transferring back to UC.

I came back for winter quarter and had to stop going home so much because of the weather. (The following winter wasn’t as bad as this one. If I had graduated one year later, I might still have gone home as often as I did in the fall). Also Mount was getting more involved. So I was stuck at OSU and forced to do more things for Mount. As a result, I got closer to more people in Mount who would invite me to go out, get lunch, or attend other things on campus. Essentially, they now knew I existed. I took on a larger role with Mount towards the end of my first year which led me to make my best friends today. I decided to stay at Ohio State and changed my major to exploration after realizing all that the school had to offer.

Sophomore year, one of my first friends in Mount asked me if I was interested in looking into another student group with her on campus; Student-Alumni Council. After being accepted to SAC, I met more of my closer friends and a group of people that love Ohio State. I spent most of that year thinking I wanted to do something health related. After volunteering at the James Cancer Hospital (as a project for Mount) I realized that I did not want to be around sick people. Additionally, at one of our new member classes for SAC, our advisor told us this concept for StrengthsQuest; Fixing your weaknesses prevents failure while playing to your strengths leads to success. So I decided to pursue my strengths and changed my major to finance.

Junior year was a struggle because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life specifically or if this was event the right choice for me. I was also on class excuse from SAC for the first half. Semesters kicked my ass….but after coming back to SAC, I was able to find a support group that led me to other opportunities. One of my friends in SAC passed along an application to apply to facilitate the Leadership Collaborative the following summer, one of my most rewarding experiences even though I was never an LCer myself. Another friend told me about leading a Buck-I-SERV trip, which led me to meet Kristen who may or may not be reading this right now. I also saw an SACer post a status on Facebook about a girl that came up to her and told her she was her tour guide and my friend was the reason that girl decided to come to OSU. That status is what made me want to be a University Ambassador. Half way through SAC, I decided I wanted to give more to the organization and ran for exec with a little push from my mentors in the organization. Shortly after being elected to VP of Finance, I was invited to a But For Ohio State event in Cincinnati. At the event, alum shared their But For Ohio State stories. One of whom was Chris Poon, dean of Fisher. She told her story of wanting to go into a health profession originally, instead working for Johnson and Johnson, and then being recruited back to Ohio State to be dean. I had always considered coming back to Ohio State to work and also working for JNJ so I sent her an email. She asked me to come meet with her and I remember after talking to her, having this feeling for the first time that I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

Senior year, who knows what lies ahead. But to think that I may have found what I wanted to do with  my life was a domino chain that started from joining one student organization in 10^th grade out of the need to find more friends, I feel as if the best is yet to come if I let it. My life is nowhere near perfect, and I am fine with that. Otherwise there wouldn’t be mistakes to learn from, failures to make my accomplishments that much more cherished, or quite frankly, anything to live for. I hope you’re not regretting the 30 minutes you spent reading this that you will never get back but that’s my story, a series of events linked to  one another in ways I could never have imagined.