My Second year in Review:
I sit in downtown Cincinnati right now reflecting back on my second year at the University of Cincinnati. To say that I have grown a little in the past year since the last time I wrote my year in review would be a gross understatement. In this past year I have made strides as a person in regards to my academics, leadership, and worldly experience as a result of the opportunities and experiences granted to me at the University of Cincinnati. During the first semester of my second year, I decided to discard my original plan of graduating with an undergraduate degree in three years and then pursuing an MBA prior to going to medical school. I decided to pick up an Operations Management major within the college of business to make me a dual degree student with Operations Management and Biology. I am personally a very plan oriented person so deciding to change my course of study and drop the MBA was not an easy decision. However, it is one that I have not since regretted. I began some my business classes during the spring semester. At this same time, I was also taking many difficult upper level biology courses. I found it absolutely baffling how completely different a business class was from a science class. Most of them were much smaller, much more interactive, and much less lecture-based. I had to adjust how I acted in class, how I did my homework, and how I studied.I noticed instantly that business classes were much less about memorization and much more about logic, problem solving, and working with others. This adjustment was hard at first, but I was able to get the hang of the differences and succeed. I believe that because of this experience, I have developed a much more fluid form of critical thinking and problem solving. I ended the semester with great success in all my classes, which attributed to be being invited to apply, and later accepted, to the Kolodzik Business Scholars (KBS) program. The KBS program is one of the most prestigious programs on UCs campus as it brings together some of the most dedicated and hard working business students on campus into one program. For the duration of my time in the program, I expect that being a member of the KBS community will further stretch my mind and horizons as I continue to pursue my education and beyond. In addition to growing in my intellectual knowledge, I experienced a tremendous amount of personal growth. Over the past year I have held four major leadership roles. These include being a Student Orientation Leader, a section leader for the UC Bearcat Bands, the GlobeMed GROW Internship Coordinator, and most recently Student Orientation Coordinator. From each of these experiences I have better in touch with my strengths, weaknesses, and personal beliefs. Of these experiences, I believe that Student Orientation Coordinator has challenged me the most in regards to my personal growth. Because of the depth of leadership that I go through on a daily basis as acting on the management team for Orientation, I am constantly challenged to continue to strive for excellence as I work to not only serve the parents and students, but also to work to serve the SOLs in any capacity and work on their training and development. Holding this position has also allowed me to be more self-aware of my strengths and weaknesses as the position challenges me every day to work to improve myself in both a personal and professional manner. All my growth from the leadership roles I was engaged with was recognized when I was awarded the Omicron Delta Kappa Sophomore Leader of the Year Award for my outstanding contributions to the University of Cincinnati. Looking back on the entirety of my second year, I can confidently say that this past year has been even more fun and definitely more fruitful than my time as a first year. All my experiences thus far have developed me into what I believe to be a strong and intelligent leader. The connections that I have strengthen from last year, and the new relationships that I have made over this year have contributed to my strong presence on campus. I have loved this past year. In the coming semester I will be challenging myself by participating in a semester exchange with the University of Birmingham in the UK. While I have been out of the country many times, I have never been to Europe and have never been exposed to its culture, especially for such a long time. While this is somewhat scary, I am also very excited to be able to expand my cultural understanding and explore the world. In order to get the most out of this experience, it is important that I stay open minded as I go through my experiences and use those to grow as a person and understand my place in the global community. As I look back on the previous year, I see a lot of personal growth. It is exciting. But I think what is even more exciting is the amount of growth that I still have left as I continue into my adult life. |