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.