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.