Paige's Blog: December 2011

This Semester I have learned about myself as a college student in many way. I have learned that the key to success is to know how not to procrastinate. I have learned that for me in order to maintain my stress level I need to know how to break down projects better. In the learning process I still have a long ways to go in order to master it. It is hard for me to take a lot of information in at one time. In order to be able to master this learning process I have to learn way in order to compensate for my weaknesses. These weaknesses have truly held me back this semester and I plan on trying different way to compensate next semester.

The biggest challenge for me so far as a college freshman has defiantly been my time management. This semester I did not know ways in order to deal with managing my time so I had put things of less priority in front of assignments that were more important. In the long run my grades were affected by these decisions. At points of this semester I became so stressed out and did not know how to handle this stress because there was so many things that I was dealing with. I was also affected by my poor time management because I became sick multiple times this semester and as more assignments got added on to my list I started becoming anxious. During these times I made poor decisions like not doing my work.

When I started becoming stressed out I did not know what to do so I avoided work at all cost in order not to become any more stressed. When I started to notice how stressed out I was I made it a point to talk to someone and seek out help on campus. I got help from the disability resource center and a couple of times from the counseling center. When talking over my poor time management with my DRC specialist we made a plan in order to become more successful in the classroom setting.

One of my biggest accomplishments this semester was getting exempt from my CSP final. I got exempt along with a few classmates because I worked hard to maintain good grades in this class. While recognizing the professor decided to exempt the students who worked hard all semester. I was so happy with this news and it showed me what hard work in college can provide you with. I was able to succeed this semester through my professors being so willing to help with problems I came across. I have defiantly faced my fare share of challenges this semester. I have faced these challenges through being sick and my laptop getting stolen. I do not believe I would have been able to succeed this semester if it was not for the number of great professors I had. Next semester I can become more successful by not stressing myself out over little things and spending more time on my studies.

I have not been as successful as I would have hoped this semester with my time management. The problems I faced this semester with my time management impacted my workload and put me in positions where I had to rush doing assignments in order not to miss an assignment. I fell as if I put a lot of time into socializing and not into my school work. Through this semester I learned that there is no one that is going to look out for my success while living away from my parents but me. I learned this lesson late in the semester when seeing a majority of my grades. The results were not great and I kept doing the things I told myself I was not going to do.

My grades this semester have been all over the place. Coming from high school where you are thought everything in the classroom thoroughly to college where you learned the basics of a topic in the classroom and have to teach yourself topics in greater detail. This transition has been hard because throughout high school I did not teach myself time management which I knew before coming to college. Math has always been an easy subject for me so I was able to do well. But, on the other hand course that require a great deal of memory are really difficult for me. Having both History 111 and Anthropology 100 were hard on me and I struggled a great deal in learning a majority of the information. This impacted my grades because when it came time to write the papers for these courses I faced a lot of trouble. I procrastinated a lot because I felt like I did not know what to do. These two courses will defiantly bring my GPA down drastically.

I did not do as well as I would have hoped with my personal goals that I created at the beginning of the semester. I put a lot of goals down and was not able to follow through with them. I am not happy with some of my grades because I was hoping to do well in all my classes but some classes I was not able to do as well as I would have hoped in. From here I would like to become a teacher or work with students with disabilities in some sort of way. There are many things that I need to change starting with my time management. If I do not improve my time management I will not be able to get the job type that I would want. Next semester I want to spend a lot more time on school work then socializing and I would like to maintain a normal stress level. I can meet these goals by setting up a schedule and doing all my work on time and not procrastinating until the last minute.