Four years ago, I was not exactly sure what my life would look like as an honors student. In HC 2400, it seemed like a lot, but I also recognized that this program would incentivize me to go out of my way to engage in my university experience more. Without this, I would likely not have the same outlook that I do now, and I feel that said outlook has prepared me for the world after graduating from Ohio University. 

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            Because of my time in OHP, I was proactively looking for things to do outside of class. As a pre-med student, there is added incentive to do more extracurricular activities, so OHP enhanced this for me. Aside from resume building though, this program has allowed me to things I did not anticipate doing as a freshman. I was able to live on my own in downtown Columbus for the summer doing an internship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. I was able to go on a trip to the Wilds for a brief foray into ecology, and I did lung cancer research as an undergrad. Apart from the wilds trip, which was an HC class, a lot of these experiences’ came from outside of Honors. However, the Ohio Honors Program taught me to keep my ear to the ground and helped me get more comfortable with cold emailing people for opportunities.

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            Two of the major themes to OHP are interdisciplinary and experiential learning. These things are important to know about and know how to work with because the “real world” works as a multifaceted, multi-expert conglomerate of life experience. Something I appreciate about the HC classes is that they are almost all comprised of a varied student body where the rest of my class contain maybe five different subtracts of two or three majors. By pushing beyond my comfort zone in pursuing experiential learning, I got to meet and work with individuals of all sorts of educational backgrounds and backstories, and in the process, I became a better researcher, more medically literate, and an overall more competent human being. Experiential and interdisciplinary learning are not necessary to get a diploma, but they make a night and day difference when sitting on the other side of four years and trying to summarize your undergraduate career both emotionally and for grad/professional school applications, CVs, resumés, etc. To that point, the Ohio Honors Program made me much better at reflecting on experiences which is a valuable life skill now as I apply for jobs and medical school, and as a lifelong learner and physician in the future. 

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            Overall, I would say the greatest thing I got from OHP was the habit of keeping my eyes and ears open and talking to people I would have before been intimidated to approach. Doing this lead me down the path that has me standing as a decent medical school applicant who now has a job in EMS. I do not know exactly where my life will lead me in the next few years, but I have a general direction and confidence that I can figure it out in no small part to the experiences and skills I have gained through being part of OHP.