2014-2015 YEAR IN REVIEW
At the close of my previous year in review, I ended with some things that I was looking forward to over the next year and my college career as a whole. Well, some of those thing happened this year, not necessarily in the way I imagined them to, but I’m thankful for them nonetheless. Just to summarize really fast before I dive in, I worked my first engineering co-op rotation, had great success in my House Manager position, joined a few more student groups while still being active in the ones I was already a part of, and even traveled out of the country for the first time.
Last summer, I had a job working as the resident golf pro at the local Dick’s Sporting Goods. Since I’m a big golf fan and love to go out and hit the links, this was a great fit for me. About halfway through July, I received an email from a professor of UC’s Electrical Engineering department asking me to come in and interview for a fall co-op position on campus. At the time, I had planned on co-oping in the spring (Spring 2015), but I wasn’t going to pass on a chance to practice my interview skills and maybe learn something new. As it turns out, the project he wanted me to work on was extremely interesting and when I was offered the position, it was just too good to pass up. To try and simplify and summarize what the project was, I was working on the sensor portion of a Band-Aid like patch that could read different ion levels in sweat, at the most basic level letting the wearer know if they were dehydrated or not. For being so cutting-edge, it was pretty simple when you got down to the bare bones of it, but I won’t go into those details.
Even though we played football downtown in the Bengals stadium, having a co-op and still being on campus was an extremely fortunate situation. I didn’t have to drive anywhere to work, didn’t have to find new housing in a different city, and I still got to be around for all of the extracurricular. One of those things was being able to lead the Annual University Honors Welcome Retreat. I had so much fun as an incoming freshman on the retreat that I felt like I should try my best to give more students the same experience that I had, and I believe that I did. In fact, I’m going back again this coming fall once more as a leader to try and do it all again. I’m looking forward to it very much. Also as a result of being in town, I was able to keep my role as House Manager for my fraternity. Since we are one the largest student organizations on campus and have a house that houses 27 members, you can bet that while it may not be the most glamorous position, I always had something to do, was always trying my best to make improvements in the house in some way, and that role really helped me find my niche not just in the fraternity, but on campus as whole. It also helped me realize that not everything can be fixed, that there are just some things out of our control, and that it’s better to just let those things pan out as they will. Being pretty much in charge of a fraternity house, I’m sure you can imagine how it goes. Thankfully though, being House Manager pretty much set me up to be elected as the next Treasurer in December, a role which I currently hold and will until the end of the next school year. Our yearly gross receipts (budget, income, expenses, etc…) are quite high, exceeding a quarter of a million dollars, so there is no pressure or anything, but I’m confident that I can get the job done and exceed expectations some people have for having an engineer as Treasurer.
One of the new organizations I was fortunate to become a part of is called Serve Beyond Cincinnati, and it is a student-run organization that gives other students the opportunity to travel outside of the city, both domestically and abroad, and perform some sort of service. This was also where I got the opportunity to travel out of the country. The trip that I went on was over spring break in March, and it was to Costa Rica. The theme of the trip was Sustainability, and so we stayed on a farm that pretty much got everything, water, food, and even some of the electricity from on the farm itself. Costa Rica is in a unique position as they were able to go for 75 days powering the entire country using only renewable energy resources. What this signifies as far as the world’s climate is up to interpretation, but I definitely came back with some ideas about how I could cut back on some things and try to live by the Costa Rican motto, “Pura Vida” (“Live Pure” or “Pure Life”). Besides learning about sustainable living (and working on some other projects, as pictured above), I came back with some strong relationships with the people who joined me on the trip. Two of the other guys on the trip were grad students and had done some other traveling in their time and so I quickly fell in with them and we enjoyed each other’s company for the duration of the trip plus some, having met up a few times since we returned. As anyone who has been abroad might tell you, there is just something about experiencing other cultures that helps to create a bond with the people who you are experiencing it with, and I don’t see that bond breaking anytime soon.
Currently, I am in classes again, and so you might be thinking to yourself, “Shouldn’t he be on co-op again?” and the answer is: yes, I should be. But for a few reasons, I’m switching co-op rotations and will be on co-op once more come the fall semester. I have already secured a position in Cincinnati at a company called Intelemage. They work with medical images and I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to learn about a subject that I have had very little exposure to. I also have the opportunity to work with some new hardware and software and so I’m very excited to learn new skills that I’ll hopefully be able to use for the rest of my life. As I continue looking forward to all of the other things I have planned or want to accomplish, such as going on another SBC trip, I would remind myself that I need to take some time off of things every now and again to be a person and not just a student. I hope that in some of this free time, I’m able to explore some of my other passions such as reading, writing, and community service. I’d like to get out of my comfort zone more often also. It’s is kind of hard for me to do so, not because I’m afraid or narrow minded or anything like that, it’s exactly the opposite. Sometimes I wonder if I even have a "comfort zone", because I’m pretty open minded and pretty laid-back about everything. I guess that helps me to create another goal for myself this coming year, to find my comfort zone, and then break out of it. I’ll be sure to check back and let you know how it goes. Thanks for reading!