Someone's URSA Experience 2022

This is it. The last week of URSA here at OSU. This has been a wonderful journey that I am very happy that I was lucky enough to take. I have learned so much about myself and about research. I also have learned that I truly do love teaching, and I have added the education minor to my degree because of that. For my last post I will be going over all of the lessons and all of the research that I did during the 2022 URSA program.

This program has shown me so much, and I have grown as a person and as a scholar through my time with URSA and my wonderful mentor Victor. I did not previously know what real research was. I thought it meant being in a lab and looking at statistics and numbers, which I was not very excited about. I know now that research is so many things. A large part of my research was pure observation and taking in information about people. Funnily enough that part of my research led me to discover a passion that I had kept hidden for a long time. I have always enjoyed helping people, especially with schoolwork or something that I really understand and it always makes me so happy to see someone figure out a problem or when you can see the lightbulb go off in their head. I got more of that with my research, and I loved telling my friends about it even more. I realized that teaching was what made me so happy during that so I declared my minor as teaching. I love helping people learn and I loved learning about how different brains work, so it only seemed natural that I go after that passion.

Another thing that I have really taken from this experience is courage. When I was debating whether or not to sign up for URSA I was fighting with myself on my cowardice. I was scared that I wouldn’t be cut out for research and that I would hate it. I was also scared of people and meeting new faces, as I have always had terrible social anxiety. I pushed myself, however, and I am so happy that I did. Now I can put on a brave face and meet new people and even have conversations with complete strangers about life goals and philosophy. I learned how to get over my fears and do what I needed to do because my mentor pushed me and had me reach out to professionals to learn about their job and day-to-day lives. I was able to get my foot in the metaphorical door of the professional world. Now I even have high-up contacts and access to professionals that I couldn’t even dream of having a year ago. Really this program helped me get some of my life back from my anxiety. Before URSA it was crippling, and I struggled with even a single phone call to a friend. I can say now that I have overcome that and I can begin my professional and career life.

Some other things that I took away from this experience are time management, professional soft skills, and a deeper understanding of my own brain, and how others process and use information, which will help me in my field of engineering and in my teaching career if I choose that route with my minor. Time management was something that I usually struggled with, especially in regards to studying and learning new information. I would either always go all in and study all at once which didn’t work very well with me and my learning style. After studying different teaching techniques for neurodivergent students, I realized how I was studying was wrong for my brain, so I switched to time based studying and making up a mock schedule of my day/time for learning and relaxing. I started writing out reminders in my room, which improved my intake of information. I started to learn in the way that my brain works best, and I have all A’s and high B’s from this term to show that.

I learned many soft skills that I will need to use in my professional career and really in my adult life as well. I already spoke on overcoming my social anxiety, but there is more to it than that. I learned how to communicate in a professional manner and I learned how to reach out to people I don’t know and make a connection. I had to reach out to many people I don’t know/didn’t know previously and schedule out a meeting, write up an interview and go through with it and interview someone on their life and work. It forced me to step outside my comfort zone and now I have a much easier time navigating the professional side of things.

Lastly, I learned about myself and others’ brains and how we all work a little differently and how to work around those differences in all sorts of different settings. This is such a useful skill because if I was ever in a teamwork setting, I would be able to pick out what part of the work would be best for my brain and others. I can delegate work out to people for what suits them best and lead them in a manner that is helpful for all people involved. This will be very useful if I choose to teach or when I get to go into schools and work as an aide or otherwise. I will be able to help students understand the material better and I can be their ally and voice for what they need/want in their education. I could even be an advocate for neurodivergent students everywhere because I know this information and I researched it so deeply.

Overall, I learned a lot of things from my time in the URSA program. I wish so much that my research could continue and I would be able to keep working on this for the rest of my college career, but all good things must come to an end. As unfortunate as that fact is, it makes me happy knowing that I came out of this experience as a better learner, a better communicator, and a more informed person on a large part of our community here at OSU. I am so happy that I got to do this research and that I am a better person because of it.

-Chloe