2014 Senior Stories
Twelve students took Math 412 Connections Seminar in Spring 2014. Here are their short personal stories.
Garrett Ahlgrim
I’m a Mathematics and Interdisciplinary major, combining music, informatics, and history. I’ve always had a passion for video games, and I’ve decided to channel that joy into becoming a video game designer myself by using the mathematics to create balanced mechanics within a game and the wide knowledge background from the other areas to incorporate philosophically challenging and provoking plotlines. I haven’t gotten there yet, obviously, but in the mean time, I’ve got a lot on my plate. Apart from my school work, I also run on the cross country team, an activity that I’ve participated in on and off since high school. For the past couple of years, I’ve also played on an intramural volleyball team, and I’ve been in the Goshen College Symphony Orchestra since my freshman year here as a violinist. I love how Goshen always presents opportunities like these to get involved in the community life-style that’s promoted here to even highly introverted people like myself. As much as I enjoy being active however, I certainly don’t find myself lacking for free time, which is largely dominated by card games, board games, video games, baking bread, and wasting time.
Hannah Bachman
I am majoring in secondary math education, and am excited to become certified to teach math to grades 5-12. My minor is piano pedagogy. I came to Goshen as a transfer student from Hesston College, a two-year college in Kansas. As a part of my teaching classes I have enjoyed my placements in the classroom observing the ways younger learners think about mathematics. Goshen College has presented me with the opportunity to teach piano to beginning piano students. I am also a part of Women’s World Choir, and have enjoyed the unique singing experience it has given me. In my free time I enjoy playing Frisbee and various intramural sports.
One of my favorite Goshen College experiences has been my Study Service Term in Peru. I enjoyed the opportunity to meet, live, and experience firsthand the hospitality of Peruvians. As a part of my service assignment I taught math in a Peruvian elementary school. It was quite interesting to be a part of the study of mathematics in another country, learning how they teach addition and subtraction. I will remember these experiences I had during my semester in Peru for my entire life.
Next fall I am excited to finish up my degree with student teaching. Then I hope to become a certified teacher and start the life my college career has been preparing me for!
Zoe Blosser
I am a third year secondary education math major as well as a piano pedagogy minor. So far my experience of being a math education major has been a great one. I have gotten to teach in two middle school classrooms and this semester I will have the opportunity to teach at a high school level. Because of all the great experiences I have had by teaching kids math, and working with their teachers, I have gotten great insight as to what a career in teaching will look like. This practical approach of gaining experience in the field of teaching mathematics before student teaching is something that attracted me to Goshen in the first place. I also especially enjoy the small welcoming community of Goshen as well as the opportunity to participate in many different extracurricular activities. Throughout my three years here at Goshen, I have participated in choir, volleyball, piano, and intramural sports. Goshen College has helped me confirm my passion for teaching and has gotten me excited for my future of hopefully teaching in a middle school or high school math class.
Philip Bontrager
I have lived in Goshen for almost my entire life. Growing up, I was always fascinated by solving interesting problems and using logic to create. By the time I was searching for a college, getting a Math major at Goshen College seemed like a good fit. At first I did not want to attend a college as small as Goshen, but when I visited the campus I was immediately embraced by the student population and shown the flexibility of a small college. Working with the professors I’ve been able to pursue a double major in Math and Informatics with a Business cognate as well as fit in a Music minor.
I started at Goshen with a Math major and Music minor. After my first year at Goshen I was able to do a summer research program with one of the math professors as part of the Maple Scholars program. We worked at creating visualizations of fair division problems and visited several conferences. On the other side of campus, through Goshen’s music program, I have had the opportunity to perform in one of the nation’s top acoustic halls with the orchestra and choir. I have had access to brilliant faculty and have access to the same musical opportunities as the music majors. Aside from music, I have enjoyed being part of intramural sports and various campus activities. Some of my best memories come from my study abroad term in Peru: living in the mountains and rainforest, meeting many wonderful people, and teaching math to little kids.
I started college only with the intention of completing a Math major and a Music minor. I took an informatics course and realized how much I enjoyed this application of mathematics. Due to this experience I added the Informatics major with Business cognate. This allows me to explore the connections between math and computer science while also getting business experience, such as helping to manage the college’s coffee shop, Java Junction. After Goshen I hope to continue what I have started here and get a masters in computer science, focusing on algorithm design. At Goshen I have built a solid foundation for many career paths ahead.
Michelle Espino
I am a Mathematics and Physics double Major. After my four years at Goshen College, I plan to obtain my bachelor’s in Civil Engineering, a discipline that focuses on the design and maintenance of roads, bridges, water systems, and buildings. Majoring in the field of Mathematics was a choice that has immensely aided my career choice since Civil Engineering utilizes complex math.
While at Goshen, I have been involved in Cross Country, Track, and intramural sports (soccer and volleyball). The most unforgettable experience was my participation in the Study Service Term (SST). I traveled to Peru and thoroughly enjoyed learning about the culture and visiting many historical sites. In addition to this, I was able to bond and create long-lasting relationships with Goshen College students and Peruvians. It was a life-changing experience that I will never forget.
The SST program also reinforced what I want to do with my degrees since my ultimate goal is to travel to underdeveloped countries and help with the construction of hospitals, schools, and any other structures that they need, but have not had the capabilities or resources to build. Living in an underdeveloped country for three months gave me the opportunity to see where I could be of assistance with my career choice.
Daniel Fecher
I began my studies at Goshen College in the empirical sciences, aiming to study biology and chemistry. I enjoyed lots of things in biology, but most of all I liked analyzing data. For me, life at Goshen became a little darker when Jim Miller, the professor with whom I had worked closely in biology research, was killed in a homicide. I was at a pivotal point: what did I want to do? And not knowing for sure, I decided to go all-in and major in mathematics. It was the one field that always fascinated me when it poked its nose into other disciplines. Whether it was the Hardy-Weinberg population equilibrium from biology or Newton’s second law in physics, I always thought of mathematics as a profoundly articulate way of describing the physical world. But at Goshen, while I have enjoyed more of the applied mathematics in courses like Differential Equations, over time I’ve been just as rewarded by courses like Abstract Algebra, which makes you step back and really think about all the operations and numbers you learned about in elementary school. It makes you wonder where all these things come from! I plan to graduate this spring with a degree in Mathematics, and shortly afterward I may pursue a Master’s degree in biostatistics.
Emily Fretz
With a mathematics and biochemistry/molecular biology double major, I have thrived in the Goshen College environment and made it into medical school. My ultimate goal is to become a pediatric anesthesiologist and do service work abroad. Goshen has prepared me well for service work through my travels with the school. Freshman year, I took a May Term class to Spain and Morocco studying history and exploring the cultures. In Spain and Morocco, as well as on my Study Service Term in Peru over the summer of 2012, I learned how to be gracious in doing service for others, how to be culturally appropriate in many different situations, and how to be most helpful even when I am not fully trained. In Peru, I worked in a rural clinic in the Amazonian rain forest with several local doctors. This is one of my favorite memories of Goshen, for at other colleges the study abroad programs do not allow service as intimate as this. For six weeks I spoke solely Spanish and was immersed in the colorful culture. But I also got to experience what medicine was like in an area where healthcare is severely limited. I believe this unique experience helped me gain entrance into medical school, because it was personal and wholly mine. In addition to my time in class and abroad, I was part of the women’s soccer team all four years and a captain my senior year. I was also successful in starting to complete research as early as my freshman year alongside a professor. At a larger college I would not have been allowed these opportunities and for this I am truly thankful. Goshen has provided a great and well-rounded undergraduate experience.
Jacob Gerig
I am a Computer Informatics Major with a cognate in Mathematics. Even before I began to think about college, I knew that I wanted to study computers. This was because when I was in 6th grade, I went to a friend’s house and we built a computer out of scrap parts for fun. It was from that day that I became fascinated with computers and technology. It wasn’t until much later, when I was studying physics, that I linked my passion for technology with Math. During high school I studied some about rocketry since I was in a model rocket club. Here I became fascinated with aircraft guidance systems and the complex algorithms used in them. This made me want to find out what further things computers and mathematics could achieve together.
Goshen College has allowed me to explore these passions freely and to receive support in my pursuits from experience professionals. The single most helpful thing to my development as a person has been on my Study Service Term trip where I went to China for a semester to study Chinese and to teach English. In China I learned about people and how to interact in a culture unfamiliar to me. Without this trip to China I would not be the person I am today.
John Miller
I am a junior Informatics major with a Mathematics cognate and with a Multimedia Communications minor. I always knew from a young age that I wanted to work in technology so this is what I have come to work towards here at Goshen. I also work on the Campus Activities Council, the people responsible for a lot of the campus events including Kick-Off, a school wide talent show, and Movie-on-the-Lawn, literally a movie shown on the campus lawn, for a semester now and I am happily continuing it. Not too long ago, about a year ago, I went on the first ever Social Service Trip (SST) Morocco with a small band of Arabic students here from Goshen. It was an amazing experience to see a place that you hear very little about on a regular basis unlike Peru or China SSTs. SST has to be one of my favorite things about Goshen College; the ability to not only visit but get embedded into another culture is a really good, enjoyable and eye-opening thing that I think every Goshen College student should be apart of. As far as my future looks, my big dream is to some day be a Game Designer making the next big eye-opening game that can propel games from being a childish hobby to being a work of art like literature or cinematography is seen today.
Joel Pepala
I am an international student from Zambia, when I first arrived at Goshen I had no idea what my future plans were going to be. I have always had an interest in Physics and Mathematics and so initially I majored in both of those subjects. I have developed a passion for statistics over the two years that I have been at Goshen College and so my future plans are to become an Actuary or a Statistician. The mathematics department offers a challenging set of courses and this has helped me develop skills that will help in the future more than I ever anticipated.
Other activities that I am involved in are sports, particularly the Goshen college soccer men’s’ soccer team and also the track team. These activities have helped to keep a balance between academics and other aspects of my life.
Goshen College has an environment that I have not experienced anywhere else that I have been in the USA. Prior to coming to Goshen College I attended Lincoln Land Community College and Moraine Valley Community College. The people at Goshen College have been so welcoming and kind. Their Mennonite identity is a reason for this.
Nick Schwartz
I am an Informatics major with a Math cognate and have a Music minor. The Informatics and Math tend to work with each other well in that a lot of math concepts can fit in with programming and the Music adds some creativity into the mix. I started as a Physics major but switched to Informatics during spring semester of my freshman year. I had realized that I had only liked physics in high school because it was easy, and I picked Informatics because I love working with computers in any capacity. I chose the math cognate because I had done a lot of math courses for physics already and I still wanted to graduate in 4 years. This transition did prove to be difficult because of how Informatics classes are set up to be once every two years. This is fine for anyone who is doing the major in 4 years but I was trying to do it in 3 which made me have to take some classes out of order. If I didn’t enjoy my major so much this would become an issue, but since I love it and the Professor is great it is not too much of a problem. Both subjects have brilliant professors that really want their students to learn the content.
My freshman year co-curriculars were Men’s choir and Lavender Jazz and Chorale. They all were extremely fun and challenging and added a ton to my whole 1st year experience. That Spring Men’s choir went on tour which was one of the best experiences of my life. The end of spring I switched from being a vocal minor to a trombone minor which was my main instrument. That next year I joined orchestra as well.
In both my major and minor I had thought I knew what I wanted to do, but I was able to switch when I realized what I truly wanted. I think the small size of Goshen allowed that to work more than had I been at a bigger college or university. All my professors and advisors take a personal interest in my success and were happy to work with me through my whole college career. Small class sizes let the professors give students individual attention. The size also lets the whole campus get to know each other to form a tight-knit community. Everyone is extremely friendly and genuinely cares about everybody else. The whole atmosphere is wonderful and welcoming. I had a close group of friends by the end of my first class.
Jacob Shetler
I am a third-year at Goshen College with an Informatics major with a cognate in Mathematics. I also have a minor in International Studies. For my Study Service Term, I am planning on going to China this coming fall. I am extremely excited about going to China and am sure that it will be a fantastic experience. One of my favorite aspects of Goshen College is my involvement in intramural sports and in the orchestra. I have also been a part of the GC’s Informatics co-curricular, Code Purple, designing and programming web pages for the GC community. Code Purple specializes in creating IT solutions for Goshen College’s academic departments and other Goshen College projects. One aspect that I particularly like about GC is the professors and their commitment to student involvement in the classroom. For example, I wrote an iPad app that an Ecology and Evolution class utilizes to collect data about water samples. After graduation I plan to start full-time as a software developer at a software company at which I have interned the past two summers.