Final Self-Assessment

Ilmar Molder

Final Self-Assessment

     Looking back, I can say that it has been one hell of a year. If anything, out of everything that I have done this semester, I can say that I believe I am now pretty well prepared for future semesters in college. Just like everyone else, I am sure I can say I had my ups and downs throughout my first experiences. Just like everyone else may say, I am going to go with the fact that everything sort of overwhelmed me and I was just excited to be in the situation I was in. I mean, college is so much more fun than I actually thought it was going to be. Of course, when I started though, I was definitely more frightened than not. I was frightened in the sense that I thought grading was going to be so much more intensive and if the slightest assignment was off or not on time I would be really screwed. I am so happy that that happened to not be the case, and teachers were actually nice in college! Of course when I started the semester, ever assignment that I did, I did as fast as I could, and kept it really high priority over every single thing that I did, so I could get the highest grade. I would make sure that it was absolutely flawless. Then as the year progressed, I did start to slack and it built up slower and slower, until I noticed how bad it was getting, then I tried to pick it back up again.

     Looking towards my classes some helped me pick up some skills, and some didn’t. Some of the skills classes were definitely Inquiry and Composition. Those two I feel gave me the most skills that I needed to be able to survive future semesters in college. Inquiry definitely, I feel it gave me the sense of being able to plan things out well. Making me get used to doing work in portions, so I am for sure not overwhelmed and forced to do all my work in one night. This helped me schedule my work out, make sure priority was issued with everything, allowing me to make my work be the best it can be. Although I cant say that I took this class for the value that it was worth. I didn’t really want to work hard in this class at all this semester. It wasn’t the teacher, or the assignments. I feel it was more that I was forced to take the class, and if I chose to be in that class I would have worked a lot harder. I did not do my personal best in this class, but I guess its because I didn’t really want to be in it. I do feel as though this is the class I should have worked my second hardest in, falling just behind my math class where I did work my absolute hardest. As for my Composition class, that class was not even that difficult to begin with, so I didn’t have to work to the best of my ability, but it did give me some really good writing skills that I definitely used in every single class that I had except math. I will always take those skills with me throughout my college years.

     A lot of the smaller things that I could connect too really helped me throughout the semester, like a few assignments, and even my peer mentor who was in our inquiry class, Lee T. It’s a lot easier to do assignments and feel comfortable doing them when you can relate to them. Things that had to do with other students in college that we had to read about made me feel good in the sense that, I didn’t feel alone, as if I wasn’t the only one who was screwed in college. Then, an amazing help was our peer mentor, who I believe affected me the most, because she was absolutely straight forward with us. She really seemed like she was just another student in the class who decided to stand up and start talking to us. She didn’t give off the “im a teacher you’re the student” feeling that really makes me actually not want to do any assignments in school.

     Like every student, once you get to the top, there has to be a falling out, because what goes up has to come down sometime. So when I worked really hard in the beginning, the moment that I learned it wasn’t that strict on me, I let that get to my head. The second that I had the feeling I didn’t have to exactly complete and assignment at an exact time, I didn’t. When given too much freedom, I took advantage of it really badly. Of course, I didn’t kill myself with it causing my grades to go extremely downhill, I still maintained a decent grade in my classes, I just know that I could have worked harder. So this being my final assessment of myself, I believe I earned the grades that I got, but I know I could have done better. The grades I got in my classes this semester I feel are pitiful to me; I can do better than that. I know I can. I abused the freedom that I had too much, and in balancing friends with school, when I saw my freedom, I chose friends. I know I am not the only one, but it’s not about me being like others, it’s about how well I do, and I know I could have done better. I got the grades I deserved, but not the ones that I wanted, or wanted to finish with. I did, however, learn all of the skills that I feel I needed to continue throughout my years in college. I can say big thanks to inquiry for that, well most of my thanks goes to inquiry anyway, because other classes did help me. Inquiry the most though, for sure. 

Final Inquiry Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vka3509XQaY

For some reason when i uploaded it to youtube, it added about 30 seconds - 1 minute of just a black screen until the credits finally appear. I am sorry for this but i dont know why it did it.

If you dont care for the video, i did 3 dives while messing around on the diving board at the end of the video, i only was allowed 5 minutes to dive so i tried to be quick, and i added a dive that i messed up and hurt a lot, which is good for a laugh.

Enjoy!

Another Goal in the Net for Me

There are a lot of things I am looking forward to next semester, and while some are going to be easy, some are also going to be hard because I know some classes coming my way are going to be more difficult. Next semester, socially, I am of course looking to meet many new people. I have no idea whats going to be in store for me, and having a lot more friends might make the journey a more simple one. Plus, I am going to need someone to hang out with while I am on break between classes, or even study with if I have tests coming up.

Personally, I still see myself living at home next semester. Living at home is saving me a lot of money that I will not have to pay back when I complete college, as southern actually pays me to attend their school. Living at home also keeps the benefits that I can stay closer to my family until I am finally ready to move out. I feel like I am not fully mature enough to live on my own yet and there are still a few small things I need to learn.

My academic goals are pretty clear. Already I must keep a C+ or higher in every single one of my class or I can no longer attend southern, but I am aiming for a goal much higher than that, I want to go for B+ or better in all my classes so I can ensure a good GPA, and maybe ill even join some clubs at southern.

Weighing the balance of success and failure

It has been a great semester, and with a lot of great things, there are times where you will succeed, and also times where you will fail or do not as great as you’d hoped. Of course, I had many these times during my first semester at Southern Conn. I’ll be easy on myself and start with all the successes that I have had and I will go from there. Starting from the beginning of the semester, I feel as though just getting into my math class was a big success because I started a lot higher than most other students usually do. Continuing from there, I feel that because my girlfriend had already been going to this school for a year, and knew a lot about the campus and how everything basically runs in this school, I had a good jump on what to do, when to do it, and a lot more about the fun school functions.

I also did have a lot of failures though. I believe some of my big failures was caused because it was my first year of college, and while I didn’t think it was going to be crazy, I believe I focused more on my freedom and fun than some of my classes. Mostly my inquiry class and my theatre class. I think more of the reason being was that those classes were required for me to take, while my math is more of the class that I want to take, and composition class was just fairly very easy. I feel as though those were my biggest weaknesses.

A side order of friends please

When I started high school I was in part of the high school called freshman academy. It was basically the same thing that this learning community is. In my English, social studies, science, and math class I had all the same students. So whenever the next subject would come I would already know everyone who was in my class. Then the year after that, I was once again in a sophomore academy, where everyone in my classes was the same students. After a while this became a little annoying as it was hurting my chances of becoming friends with a lot of new people through high school.

I can say this though, I am glad that I have the same people in my composition and in my inquiry class together because it helped me build a stronger bond and make some more new friends. I feel if it was like high school and they were in every single one of my classes then I would be slightly annoyed because its college and I definitely want to meet new people along the way. It also made my experiences in the class a little more comfortable because I am more friends with everyone in my learning community. For my math class, I don’t really have friends in there, so if something funny happens, I actually feel a little awkward laughing or making my own joke because I am afraid I am going to look like a weirdo or be put down in some way. So I definitely think this helped me open up more and meet new people, and I am glad that it wasn’t just like high school all over again.

Destination: Florida

After I graduate from college with the degree in Accounting that I hope to have, I really have high hopes for where I want to be, where I want to work and the kind of house I want to live in. For starters, for a long time I had been planning to move to Florida. There are so many things bout Florida that call my name and make me wants to enjoy the rest or most of my life down there. First off, I have a lot of family down there, so I’d be able to be with people I couldn’t be with before. Then there is the weather, which is almost perfect for me because it is beach weather all the time and my favorite sport is swimming. Taxes are also much cheaper than CT, and also houses cost so much less! The only flaw I see is that it may get really hot down there sometimes, but hey, I guess I might get used to it.

Next thing on my list is my career. I really want to jump into my career as soon as possible so I can start making money as fast as I can. My ideal career is going to be as an accountant for people personally and as well as a business, this way I can make a very decent salary that I would never have to worry about spending money on the little things.

Last on my list are a nice house and a nice car. I have really high hopes for just a normal 5 bedroom house. Nothing too huge, but not too small where I feel claustrophobic. I feel like huge houses are pointless anyway and small houses can make you go crazy after a while.

But of course, more than anything is, before I can get to there, I have to go through college now and take my time with it. If I truly want it, I will get it in the end.

rough draft

Here is my rough draft video, not even close to being done, so it might not make sense, but hey enjoy.

FOOOOOOOOOOOD

It is really interesting that I am going to blog about food this week seeing as my final inquiry video project is half about nutrition and why it is important for you to eat the right things to stay healthy. I am reminded of the phrase that I used to hear a lot when I was younger, “food is really yummy in my tummy”. Seeing as it was thanksgiving week, I, and I am sure so many other people this amazing week, also feasted on some of the greatest things in the world.

For my thanksgiving feast, my mom prepared some home-made Mac and cheese, which was cooked with velvetta cheese, a huge turkey that we decided to slow cook overnight this year, and my favorite, which are twice baked potatoes. Oh man I really love twice baked potatoes. They are like if you take the greatest thing in the world, and multiply it by about 300, and then subtract 22; you get a twice baked potato.

There is however one food I wish my mom did make this thanksgiving that she did not. My favorite meat of all time is honey ham. I love honey ham almost as I love the twice baked potatoes and to hear that she did not make it this year kind of made me upset. But then at a surprise dinner that my dad attended I got very lucky because instead of a turkey, she made honey ham. The only downside was that I had to heat it up because I had to work all day.

Leading the Team

I had a very big time to be a leader, and it really helped me learn a little more about responsibility, and how your actions can affect other people and really help them. When I was a swimmer back in high school, as a senior, I had to help lead the team in the right direction, make sure they were all doing the right thing, no goofing off and no breaking the rules. I watched over the team whenever we went to other schools for swim meets because we had to be on our best behavior and show respect to the other team, because in the end we are all equals and we are entering their home, we cannot be disrespectful. In the end the team we went to face that day will remember us as a team who won with respect and appreciated them, or a team who lost but is respectful.

Leadership in this sense may seem a bit easy, or like a captain’s job. But while I was not a captain, they had their hands plenty full with all the other important things, like financing the team, etc. However, leading this team was actually pretty hard and not your average cup of tea, because our team seem to have plenty of people who did not like to follow the rules, or liked to goof off especially when in front of other teams. Watching over them was almost like watching a batch of children who would constantly scream.

Definitely from leading this team I learned all the important values of being a leader. This was a difficult team to lead, and I happen to pull it off by myself and I am proud of myself for that. I believe I did a good job, and turned everyone the right way, and they will remember those values even when their swim career is over and they will carry those traits on forever.

Math was hard

A difficult situation I have been in this semester was going into my math class. The current math I am in is precalculus, Math 122. My class is full of juniors and seniors from the upper class. This class was so much more math intensive than anything I had experienced before, we were learning completely new things that I have never seen before. But I guess that’s the point of learning, when your introduced to things you have never heard of.

I try to give it everything I got in this class. The amount of effort I put in I feel is the grade I am getting out of it. While I have yet to experience the chance to get a 100 on a test or Quiz, I am determined it will happen before the end of the semester. That is actually a huge goal I have. Even though it was very hard to adapt to just joining this math class, just being able to continue learning in it and also do well in the class is still hard all on its own.

I am still working to keep up with it and everyone in the class, so far I am going through the class with a grade of a B+ and next semester I am tackling an even more difficult math class. The transition to that class I feel will be even 10 times more difficult because I have heard that many people tend to fail the Calculus 1 class.

Math!

The class that I find extremely stimulating is my math class. It never ceases to get the blood really flowing through my mind. There is so much to learn when it comes to math, everything about it is unbelievable. From equations to logarithms to how to graph them to trigonometry, etc. There is math everywhere and it is upsetting that most people don’t seem to really like math. You use math more than any other subject in school, because you use math every day, even if it is simply adding a few dollars or calculating the time. Some people may argue that you use “English” more, and yes you do as a language, but in English class you are doing essays and such, and you don’t do that every day.

I am currently in math 122, precalculus. I am really happy with myself to say that I am in this “advanced” math class with many juniors and seniors who are about to graduate and I am starting in their math class. I am slightly upset with myself that I have yet to see myself earn a 100 in that class, but I guess I just have to work that much harder. As each quiz and test comes I am surprised at the material that shows up on it, because it is what we leaned, except the problems are so much more difficult than the normal class problems. Precalc is challenging, and so will calculus be when I take it next semester, so I am excited to learn even more math.

Study Together

I am not going to lie, there are so many different places that you can study on Southern’s campus. Its so unbelievable. They have rooms that are even designated for that kind of thing, such as the Fireplace Lounge. I even had the opportunity to make it to the fireplace lounge a few times this year and it is actually really relaxing total quiet place to study because no one is allowed to talk. There are also some very hidden rooms far deep into the Student Center that are for the most part vacant and has a tv, some chairs and an outlet in case you need your laptop. Those kinds of spots are good if you are hiding from somebody, or need to be alone. I however really enjoy studying in a place with an abundance of people, so that I can get help if I may need it or so others can join in also.

Not of these however, to me, beat studying outside of the school directly on the campus grass. Especially when the weather was warmer, I enjoyed finding a nice tree right after class with my friends, sitting underneath it, and talking and studying. It is also great because if your other friends happen to see you, they can always come in and join in with you guys. Eventually you have this huge group of people sitting by a small tree and everyone is helping each other out, or they are socializing and having a great time.