YEAR 4
This past year has been all about confidence: in travel, in relationships, and in design. I always considered myself to be self-confident and sure of who I am as a person, but I definitely had a lot of nerves to conquer during my experiences over the past several months. Thankfully, this reflection is about how I was given many opportunities to grow and mature as a rising senior in my major and as a global citizen.
After finishing up a great summer internship at Bissell Homecare Inc. in Grand Rapids, I immediately embarked on my next great adventure: a four month study abroad trip to Daejeon, South Korea. I absolutely loved my time there! Having been in South Korea for more than a week before, I was feeling fairly confident when I arrived at the familiar airport. Still, over the course of my time there I gained so much more confidence and experience in planning trips and navigating a new place. I was incessantly trying new things even though I couldn’t be sure I was doing them correctly. I think it was also a valuable experience to be a minority. I was almost always stared at, sometimes laughed at, pointed at, and a couple times even photographed. Though I didn’t let the pressure get to me, I often felt the need to represent white foreigners well by my behavior wherever I was. Still, the Korean people were for the most part very welcoming and excited about Americans visiting their country.
The food, the classes, and most importantly the people at KAIST University had a big impact on my stay. There were over 100 foreign exchange students from all over the globe studying in Daejeon during that fall semester. I often worked with them in class and got to know more about their cultures along with the Korean ones. My best Korean relationships came from the church group I joined on campus. Everyone was welcoming and accepting, eager to help newcomers; it really strengthened my faith to experience such a sincerely caring family all the way on the other side of the world. I especially felt blessed to have English as my first language so that I could freely communicate with pretty much everyone. I did learn my fair share of Korean food and survival terminology and was genuinely praised by restaurant staff for putting in the effort to learn their language. I also learned to read their wonderfully efficient alphabet and was surprised by how many words were actually American terms converted into Korean spelling. On the second to last day of my trip, I had a pretty good Korean conversation with my taxi driver, and it felt very good to connect with a local in that way.
Even though I was very involved in all of my classes (which you can read about on my experience results page) I still had time to travel all over the country. I visited the palaces of Seoul and the beaches of Busan, climbed up a mountain, and explored the inner city of Daejeon using busses, trains, and taxis. My friends and I often stayed in hostels and took the time to explore places besides the tourist areas. Midway through the program, I went on a weekend retreat trip with the church group to Nogunri Peace Park. This was a particularly humbling moment for me because the park is a memorial dedicated to the families of innocent people who were gunned down by an American airstrike during a terrible Korean War massacre. Even though our country helped overthrow Japan’s oppressive attempt at colonizing Korea and made a lot of their current technological growth possible, it was yet another reminder that we cannot pretend to know what is best for other countries and that war always comes with a horrible cost.
Another highlight of my stay was a six-day trip to Tokyo, Japan. Three of us students booked our own flights and train tickets, navigated the amazing subway systems, and self-guided our trips throughout the massive city. We tried all sorts of incredible foods, visited Tokyo tower, met up with other UC exchange students, and visited a hedgehog café. We experienced two earthquakes during our stay in an AirBnB in Shinjuku, the most densely populated area. I also had the best sushi of my entire life. I felt especially independent and capable after we all made it safely home from our mini vacation. This study abroad trip not only gave me a better sense of Korean lifestyle, but also global culture. I am definitely inspired to travel independently in the future.
I started off 2018 by moving back to Cincinnati for my spring semester co-op job at Kaleidoscope Innovation. They are a design consultancy currently located downtown, overlooking the river and the Reds Stadium. I came in to work not knowing if I had missed out on developing more concrete industrial design skills because of my different courses in Korea. With the encouragement of my coworkers, however, I quickly regained confidence and was able to consistently put out high quality work on various projects. While I had always suspected it to be true because of my background in nursing work, I found out that I really like medical device design and started to get pretty excited about it. I was lucky to be on the front end of several interesting projects where I got to use my favorite skills of sketching and problem solving. Nevertheless I absolutely dreaded coming in to work on the week that we started taking our final concepts into 3D modeling software. I was worried that my team would be disappointed in my CAD work and that I wouldn’t be able to do the work required. Thankfully, I had an amazing UCID graduate coworker as a mentor who taught me more about SolidWorks than I realized there was to learn. Lots of hard work, coaching, and pushing through frustrating moments resulted in me finally getting a grip on what I was doing! The more I understood the program, the more I liked the work because I felt less overwhelmed.
This co-op experience made me more willing to speak for myself and trust my design sense. I had fantastic interactions with my coworkers and truly felt like I was a highly contributing part of the team. While a team leader was on vacation for two weeks, Kaleidoscope let me take charge of the project and facilitate all direct interaction with the client. It was amazing to be trusted with this responsibility, and I got a real taste of the job I love. I found out that I particularly enjoy the consultancy pace, the variety of experiences and projects that came my way, as well as the altruistic nature of medical device design. I will keep these things in mind as I search for my final internship this month.
As I head into Capstone development during this summer semester, I will reflect on everything that I have learned about my work and myself. I recently picked a premise topic that I am very excited about since it brings medical technology into the hands of the average person for home use. The next step is to research everything like crazy! I have never conducted research before, but I am eager to be able to present such support for my final project. Outside of school, I have been attending meetings for my upcoming missions trip to the rural regions of Guatemala. The team and I will be working with Mission Impact, an organization that installs clean water filtration systems and latrines in people’s homes. I can’t wait to experience yet another new culture and way of life in Central America as I live out my faith through volunteer service.
Next semester, I hope to do something wild for my last co-op. I feel pumped about moving to a new place again, figuring out the beat of the city, and coming in to work with confidence and a can-do attitude. I want to defend every design decision I make and be included in more client interactions. I feel ready to see what my senior year holds in store for me!