Lessons Learned, Final Blog Post

     All that crosses my mind when I think about the beginning of college is completely dreading both of the orientations. The one in May with our parents, and the one right before school started. It was partially because I was nervous and partially because I just didn’t want to start school again. I have never been good with change and starting a whole new school for 4 more years is a drastic change. I had my mind set before I even applied to colleges that I was going to commute. I knew I wanted to go to an in state school, but Southern was my last choice. I guess it worked out for the better that I ended up going here. Coming into college I already knew what I wanted to major in, so I put it on all of my college applications. I was already a step ahead by knowing and actually being interested in what I wanted to do. Working with kids was always one of my passions so I decided to be a speech therapist in an elementary school.

     I remember one of the first emails I got was for this class. I read it and literally started crying. I was so overwhelmed by what it said and felt like I wasn’t prepared to start college, never mind start homework before I even stepped foot in the classroom.  But I calmed down and anticipated for the first day. I only had two classes so it wasn’t that bad. I got to know my professors and adjusted to the classes fairly well. I ended up dropping my communications class within the first week, and I don’t regret that decision even though I ended up taking a class I had absolutely no interest in.

      I learned a lot about myself in the last 4 months than I did in the last 4 years of my life in high school. Socially, mentally, and work wise I figured out a lot that I never knew.  I’ve made friends, and lost old ones, gained knowledge, and expanded what I already knew. One of my greatest successes is passing 4 math tests that I NEVER passed in high school. Sounds silly, but I was never the best at math, Now in college, I have almost an A+. That is totally shocking to me and I could not be more proud of myself.  I’ve always been good on the homework and class work aspect of school; I think that’s what always kept my grades up. As much as I study, I do not do well at all on tests. That is what always jeopardizes me in all my classes.

            Since I knew what I wanted to do before entering college, I had person goals that I set for myself. In order for me to get into the CMD program, I need to keep a B in all my classes, and get a 3.0 gpa by the end of the semester. So that was one of my biggest goals. After we took midterms I reached that goal in almost all of my classes, since then I feel like I achieved those goals. But we will see after finals come around.  Till this day one of my favorite things we learned in this class that has stuck with me is the 10,000 hours theory. You need to work at something for more than a day, more than 24 hours to become a master at it and I couldn’t agree more.  This can also go along with what we learned about Twyla Tharp. In order to be creative you have to work at things to improve yourself. Even though these are two little things we learned in class I connected with them more than I thought. I will definitely take these two discussions into my next 4 years because I can use them with anything I do.

“ I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets record of successful experience behind him”

          -Eleanor Roosevelt



My family is what keeps me motivated. They are the only ones that I can truly count on, and the ones who I know will always will be there. My family expects so much from me, and they believe in me. When my whole family is together and they ask me how college is going they give me nothing but encouraging words to finish these next three years.  I don't think I could have started college without them and hope every single one of them is still here to finish this long journey with me.

Last Campus Safari

Since I've been slacking on my campus safaris, I knew I had to do the last one. In my politics class, we have a term paper due the day of the final. One of the requirements was that we go to the Writing Center and get our paper revised. I made an appointment yesterday, and went today at 11:00.  At first, I didn't really think a lot of people actually went there, but then i realized it is necessary to make an appointment in advanced because they are booked! I didn't know that when you go in there you need to have a specific reason of why you want them to help you with your writing. That sounds stupid but I just thought that they helped you with grammar and punctuation and the obvious things wrong with your paper. But the man that looked over my essay was very helpful. I explained to him what the paper was about and what my professor was looking for. He also gave me handouts on how to do proper MLA format to help me with my citations. I am very pleased with my visit there and Im happy I went regardless that it was mandatory. I would definitely go again for any other type of paper I had to write.

video re post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fo85S6u84E&feature=youtu.be

Take what you learned, and use it.

      I feel like in a lot of these blog posts I'm repeating myself. But, this semester was all about adjusting to change. Next semester we will already be used to the college life. The only thing that we will have to adjust to again is new professors and their style of teaching. I think one of my greatest successes was how well I managed my time. I had to balance school, homework, work and trying to keep a social life because that is still important. In the end I passed. I never fell behind in any of my classes and always had work done in advance so I had more time to do other things. If I knew things were tough I would start them earlier. I have always been good at that even in high school, and I am happy to say that is one of my better traits. Even though these classes are semi easy, I still did very well and I was surprised with myself. I wouldn't necessarily say that I had major failures this semester. I feel like I did well especially for the type of person I am. One thing I can work on is focussing more in certain classes and giving it 110% and nothing less. I also learned and realized that in some classes if you don't care from the beginning, it can ruin the whole semester for you. You can get one bad grade, and jeopardize your final grade for that course. So its better to just give it your all from the first day, all the way to the very end. I will take what I learned in the past 4 months and use it in the next four years.

Thoughts and Ideas

For our final project I have decided to do the 600 word blog post. Even though I got good grades on my video projects I don't feel as successful in them as I should be. I have always felt like I was a good writer so by writing about the semester I think I can get a better grade. When I am interested in something I know I can do very well with it and writing is something that I love. In all honesty I haven't really started it yet, or gave it THAT much thought, but I have a vague idea of what Im going to do. basically I'm just going to talk about this semester and my successes and failures. In the beginning I will talk about the transition from High School to College, and talk about what was most difficult, and what was the easiest. I learned a lot in our inquiry class with the books we had to read, and the articles online and mostly our discussions we had in class. I will try to incorporate some of those in as well. That made me get a different view and different aspects from other people on what they thought about different topics such as the10,000 hours theory, or Twyla Tharps The Creative Habit book. At first I thought this class wasn't important but it really does help you understand college a little bit more. You learn things that some people would never teach you if you didn't have this class. But hopefully my final project will be more a success than any of my videos because I am more intrigued with this and can be more descriptive in my writing than any old video I would made.

Video 3

I will admit, this last video project before our final was not my best out of the other two. I think it came out ok, but could have been better if I prepared more for it and thought it through more. There are hundreds of problems that first year students face, but I connect with the social life problem more than anything. Which is kind of sad being in college now. But that is just the type of person I am.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMhvZheAQJ0

"Creativity is just connecting things" -Steve Jobs

    Everybody has a different imagination, and different ideas. Thats why no two peoples work will ever be the same. I don't believe you are born with creativity, I think you need to be brought up throughout your whole life with creativity. If you do something since you were a little girl or boy, then you will become better at it throughout the years. That to me, is creativity.
  The Creative Habit, is a book that I believe should be read by all different types of kids and even adults. Musicians, artists, athletes, teachers etc should read it. It gives out all different messages to people who have different interests. In the end we all have a passion and want to do nothing but succeed and make others happy, but sometimes we do have to fail to see the good. I believe that her perspective and outlook is something we should all admire. Creativity is important in a person because it makes them who they are. You can let yourself be who you want by the things you do. To go with discussions in class I do believe that creativity is lost in schools. All the way from elementary school we are always taught specific ways to do something and if we didn't do it that certain way it was wrong. Which I think is not fair. Everybody's brains work in a  different way and as little kids we can figure out more than one unique way to solve a problem. I think everybody at least once in their live should go out into the world and do something different. Do something out of your comfort zone and be creative about it. We shouldn't have to live life worrying about what other people are going to think. You never know how different your life can be just because of creativity. From what I have noticed by other people, its a whole new world and you experience things you would never imagine.