I interviewed my sociology instructor Chelsea Bullard; she is a red head and has a very bubbly personality. In class she smiles and laughs frequently. Interviewing her was interesting because she is a grad student and has been in school for seven years and has two- three more years to go. Her experiences can be helpful for people that are undecided about their major. Declaring a major can be very scary. It’s normal for college students to find a new passion while in college straying from their intended major. I learned a lot about Chelsea during the interview, she is a twenty five year old grad student, from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
She graduated from Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences; she is the oldest child and has one younger brother. Both of her parents did not finish college. She has had plenty of emotional support from them. Chelsea went to college majoring in micro biology. She wanted to be a doctor ever since she was a little kid and was going to be a diabetes doctor for kids. Chelsea has diabetes, and attends diabetes camp every summer since she was eight years old and is now twenty five years old. One or two weeks out of the summer, a kid can go from the age of eight to sixteen, than can become a counselor.
It is just like regular camp swimming, boating, archery and just playing games and having fun but everyone has diabetes. Hospitals and diabetes supply company’s donated medical equipment to the summer camp. All the counselors are trained on how to manage diabetes, most of them have diabetes. Also there are doctors and nurses, all the counselors are able to take care of children campers that have diabetes. They ether have diabetes or has been to all the training. The counselors are trained on symptoms of diabetes, low blood sugar and high blood sugar, and trained to help out if anything gets out of control.
All of her fellow counselors she met at the diabetes camp all decided they were going to be pediatric doctors, for treating diabetes. Soon realized they weren’t as smart as they thought they were and chose different career paths that did not take as long. Their ideas changed but still ended up in the medical field. Chelsea got her undergraduate in sociology, masters in forensics in psychology and is now in graduate school for crime and deviance forensics. Chelsea said her most challenging experiences while an undergrad was learning time management, trying to have time for homework friends and family.
She attended the University of Oklahoma before coming to Oklahoma State University, majoring in micro-biology. She attended OU for one year. Chelsea changed her major from micro-biology to sociology because she was not having fun, struggled in her classes, and hated math. She talked to her advisor at OU about her chemistry and math grade. Her advisor told her, “Your not going to make it if you’re struggling already. Find a new major in twenty-four hours. ” I asked her if she had any regrets about picking sociology as a major in twenty-four hours, with easiness she said “no”.
Chelsea said it would be nice to be in a major that makes more money. She said “Looking back, that was pretty crazy; but I have always liked people, studying people, and doing social experiments. ” Chelsea said her experience at OU was very good; she really enjoyed being there. “Don’t tell anybody. ” she said joking. She also says the major difference she saw at OU, was the type of people were different, here at OSU everyone is super friendly but it’s really hard to get in deep with them, they are just friendly on the surface. At OU, she says the friendships felt deeper, more intense.
When she came to OSU, she had a lot of OU “swag”. She walked around campus wearing an OU hat, shirt and sweat pants. She didn’t know anything about the rival between OU and OSU. She said everyone was giving her dirty looks, and thought the people where mean at OSU, she said jokingly. She made the Sex-perts organization because a lot of students at OSU surprisingly were not educated about the basics of sex.
Chelsea said she was talking to one of her buddies. He said “Hey I got laid tonight,” she asked him, “Did you use a condom? He replied “half of one. ” She talked to the student organization lady, Peggy, about making Sex-perts and also talked to Terry Dennison, Sex-perts head at OU and an educator at Planned Parenthood. Chelsea asked him if she could copy his organization, and start it at OSU. Chelsea says he was totally on board, and trained everybody. During the summer when OU were having their training, Sex-perts went and watched, learned and also trained. They did peer to peer education; they went to dorms informing people about the basics of sex.
In class one day Chelsea bought the game they would take to Kerr – Drummond the freshman dorms and they would also go to fraternity and sorority houses. She split the class in two groups, the other side of the class room team name was Chlamydias and my side of the class room team name was safe sex is the best sex. She had this wood board and it had questions on the board and every time a group got a question right they got a point and if they got the question wrong the other team received that point. After someone got a question right Chelsea would throw a small bag with a condom and three Hershey kisses.
On the board it had questions like do you need to use a condom for oral and anal sex to questions like what medications voids birth control. It was very informational and she explained more about the questions after we answered them. She received hate mail from people about her organization. They were friends from a conservative background, grace catholic friends, also people that she did not know that did not support planned parent hood. They emailed he sayings things like “hey, I think your going down the wrong path, I think this is really inappropriate, people don’t need to know this.
They could have learned this from their parents. You supporting sex and sex does not need to happen unless your married”. Chelsea said the emails where coming from a place of love and the peoples culture and religious identity. She continues to say that it was her decision and people don’t have to listen to what she is saying. She said since she got hate mail she must have been doing the right thing. The transfer student’s origination is another organization that Chelsea was apart of when she came to OSU.
It is for transfer student that get forgotten about. With the organization they help students that move from one university to another, because it’s hard to meet people once you’re already going in your studies. They went places, blowing and just did regular organization activities. With the sociology club, they had a lot of different meetings, they would go to the prison in Mcalester; the students in crime and deviance are able to see what it is like and if that is a potential job for them, and just learning about the conditions in the jail.
Her most memorable thing to her is when she filled out an application for a scholarship and she got the scholarship, she went to the awards dinner. Professor Dr. Gill told her that she go to graduate school for sociology. Before than, she never thought about going to graduate school, Dr. Gill opened a door for her that impacted her a lot. In Grad school Chelsea still has college experiences; she went out of the country on a medical trip to Nicaragua last year in December for ten days. Three of those days she was there by herself, first time being alone in a different country, environment.
Jokingly she said during those three days she freaked out. She experienced culture shock in Managua. The very first day she got there. In her hotel, she heard gun shots and started “freaking out” she said. She tells me she barricaded the door with chairs and other furniture, ended up falling asleep with a small blade in hand. The next day she realized the gunshots she heard, was actually fireworks from a festival they were having. The next day in Nicaragua she went on a trip to a volcano. One of the only places in Nicaragua where it’s allowed to slide down a volcano, they call it volcano boarding.
She did not knowing she was going, she had on really poor shoes for volcano boarding, because you use your feet for brakes. Plumas is on the volcano. Chelsea in some of the friends she met there climbed up the volcano, she said she could not breathe. She was climbing up the volcano with a sled and had to have people help her cause she was gasping for breath, she said all of this laughing. She said they basically dragged her up there because she was not use to the altitude. She burned through the bottom of her shoes while using her heels as brakes.
Immediately she had these two huge blisters on her heels with Plumas in them. Once her group gets there the following day, they go hiking. Their hiking for miles and miles, Chelsea still has huge blisters on her feet. Her feet got infected from hiking for miles. She didn’t want to say anything, and tried to keep them clean but it wasn’t enough. She went to the man doctor on the trip, and tells him that she needs some medicine and showed him her feet. She described it has a black line going up her leg of infection. Everyone freaked out, because she has diabetes.
Chelsea wasn’t as concerned about the blisters like her group was. She says it was a lot of fun and she does not regret going volcano boarding. Chelsea life has seemed to not go as planned but she has had numerous of experiences that has made her life what is it today. Chelsea is my sociology instructor, so I asked her why she wanted to become a teacher. She quickly replied and said I didn’t. She commented, “When I was little I definitely did not want to be a teacher”. She likes it now but at first she was so nervous all the time, people starring at her.
She enjoys sociology and thinks that’s she’s doing well, she learned that she really likes school and could make a career out of it. Chelsea has had a lot of experiences in college, good or bad it was all a memory and made her who she is today. College is full of decisions and with every decision they open another door. Chelsea applied for a scholarship. That decision opened a door and Dr. Gill impacted Chelsea decided to go to grad school. Don’t be afraid, you might not have the passion you thought you had for your first major.