As this semester comes to end, it’s good to reflect upon
what worked for you and what didn’t. The start of this semester was a bit tough
because it took me a while to adjust to college life. Once I got the hang of
things I was able to pick up the pace with my schoolwork. I wouldn’t say my
first semester was a total fail or success. I think it was a happy medium
between the two. I’ve been put under many different situations, and I wasn’t
quite sure how I would handle them. I learned a lot about myself and pushed my
self to places I didn’t think was possible.
I’ve touched upon the fact that high school wasn’t really
that hard of a push for me. Yes, I had worked hard on essays and project but
nothing quite like college work. Each week in my history class we had to read
30 page chapters because we were quizzed on them. History is just not my forte,
and so it was a struggle to really get catch up with work. My problem was that
I would leave all the readings for the night before and it was too much for me
to handle. I specifically remember spending 3 hours straight reading my
textbook and trying to make sense out of it. Overall, the history course I took
was a big challenge for me. No matter how hard I studied for something I just
didn’t do good enough to get good grades. I also struggled with the blog post
due each week. I know we had a whole week to do them, but sometimes I would
lose track of time and I would have to do them all at the last minute.
Reflecting upon my biggest challenges I can see that I didn’t really do well
with weekly assignments due. I wasn’t accustomed to spreading out the workload
and that ended up becoming my downfall.
When challenges knock me down, I figure out ways I can beat
it. For history, it was a little harder to find a way to do better on my
quizzes and tests. I tried so many different techniques depending on how the
previous week went. Not reading the textbook or taking good notes didn’t help
me at all. So, I decided to read the book and use sticky notes to summarize
each paragraph. When I went back to go over the chapters I could easily
remember what was being talked about when I read my notes. It helped me keep
track of events and the order they happened with. I did significantly better when
I did that, but as we progressed into the school year I had more work due in
other classes and I didn’t have 3 hours to read a chapter. I truly felt like I
tried so hard to see improvement but in the long run it just didn’t work out
for me. With the blogs, it was an easier to fix the problem. I saw what areas I
had lacked full credit, so I went back and tried to exceed the required word
count, and really expand my critical thinking in each post. Week by week I was
tremendous improvement. I went from getting 70’s and 80’s to high 90’s.
From the start I knew that time management was going require
more effort than usual. I am simply not good at time management, and for
college I had to really force myself to work on a schedule. I tried to limit
social time and dedicate more time to schoolwork. Once I got the hang of that,
I tried to fit in a workout at least once a day. It wasn’t too hard to set my
priorities straight and once I did it was smooth sailing for me. I also tried
to avoid distractions such as my phone or the television, and tried to make the
most of the free time I had. Instead of sleeping, or watching TV in my dorm I
would go over notes from class, or get a head start on assignments that were
due soon. Doing so would allow more free time either during the week, or the
weekend. One thing that really surprised me was how well I did on the essays we
had for my media class. There were only 3 of them this semester, and I did each
one of them the night before it was due. I put in a whole days worth of work
and critical thinking in those papers and the result of that was an “A” quality
paper. On my last paper I honestly thought I was going to do really bad, but I
ended up doing really well on it! In fact, my professor liked the quality of my
work she suggested that I look into majoring for Media Studies. That was such a
huge compliment for me, and I was beyond excited to have heard that my work was
really good. This semester made me go through some serious changes. I feel like
I have improved in so many different areas such as my writing skills, critical
thinking, preparation for class, and overall responsibilities for my actions.
This semester, I didn’t have specific goals but I always
strive to do well in all my classes. If I’m not doing well in a class, I try to
set goals for myself to improve. For this upcoming semester I want to do things
differently. First off, I want to be way more organized with my day-to-day work
schedule. I want to plan out a weeks worth of work and get it done when I say so.
Leaving things for last minute really didn’t do anything but stress me out!
Also I want to take the courses more seriously and not skip any classes and
jump right into the work and stick with it. Another goal I have for myself is
to take finals more seriously and study more and really be prepared for each
and every one of my exams. Especially because the excitement to get out of
school, I want to stay focused on my studies and work. Now that I have a better
understanding of college workload, I want to really give it my all in every
class. I was slacking a little bit this semester, but I don’t want to let
myself get there again. I can work hard and continue to do so; it just will
take self-motivation.
