Sunday, January 26, 2014

Letter to my classmates (the beginning of our journey)


Dear classmates ,
      I believe it has been a tough journey for every single one of us that was capable of accomplishing all the hard work that was put this past semester. Yeah we all know that college is not easy and that many of the things we did back in high school have no significant approach to our college academics. We are now starting our second semester of college and learned new ideas, new perspective and learned a little bit of ourselves.
     I learned many new things this past semester that I never really took in count of. Ah! those stressful nights of studying, trying to cramp all the information that was going to be on the test the next day and barely sleeping 3 hours. Waking up in the morning cramping more information. When it came time to the test I felt like everything that I studied had slipped past my head, as if I had not learned the topic. Why did I do such a thing to myself? Procrastination is one thing everyone does. We as students feel like putting aside important things and doing them last minute will make us feel better. When in reality it makes us feel worst.  I did this a couple of times, especially those days where I would chose to hangout with friends instead of studying for a big math exam. I learned that I was not doing any good to my self and that if I kept doing things last minutes I was going to pay the consequences of my grades. So I’m giving you this advise, DO NOT PROCRATINATE! this semester and do everything on time because for one thing it makes life a bit better. It will not hurt to put all the fun things aside for a while and make school your number one priority. Plan ahead and do everything on time.
        Time management can be hard for some people but I never thought it would be hard for me since I’m such an organized person. Things started to build up and I couldn’t find a way to make things work and have a schedule for the plans I had during the week.  I felt like everything crashed once I got a job because I felt like the free time I had before I started working became my work schedule. Working every other day would be hard to plan how I would do such things like homework, studying, and going to psychology researches in order to get credit for my class. This was not my greatest weakness considering procrastination my first. But it did affect me in ways that I would spend most of the days doing one thing instead of all the things I actually had to do. I did manage to get it together once I settled in my job. I used an agenda that by the end of the semester became my best friend. I kept everything organized and seeing that I had to do lets say more than three things in a day, it motivated me to actually do the things instead of just doing one thing and stressing over the other. An agenda can be a great thing for everyone because it helps you plan and organize your things so that way you have more time and your able to manage it. My advice would be to stay organizes with work, homework, and other things you have to do during the day. I think time management is one of the important things that every college student should be aware and should keep in count of for the rest of their career.
         The last thing I would like to share with you guys that I thought was very helpful in my first semester is go to your professor’s office hours. We all have questions to ask to our professors, but sometimes we don’t have the chance to ask during class or simply we are scared to. So why not stop by their office, introduce ourselves and get help when we need to. By going to office hours you are getting an extra hour or so of help and the fact that you are capable of going is a plus to boost our confidence with understanding the course. I hope these tips help every single one of you and good luck with your studies and the new semester ahead of us.

"word count: 736"

3 comments:

  1. Hi Astrid! Thanks for these points -- it seems that you've learned quite a bit about how to succeed in college in just one semester. Looking back, what do you think you were like in terms of procrastination and time management when you were in high school? Do you think these issues were bad habits you developed in high school and learned to correct when you started college?

    I like that you're beginning to take advantage of the font formatting, using underlines and bold, though I'm interested to know why you bold some statements and underline others. Do the bold and underlines function in different ways for you?

    Please remember to post your word count from now on.

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    1. Hello professor Lim
      During my senior year in high school I did get a bit lazy just because senior year felt like an easy year for me. I would rarely get any homework and when I did I would do it last minute and it wouldn’t affect me as much as it did in college. These habits I brought with me to college were from high school. I remember many of my friends that were already college students would tell me that you could not do things like the habits I had, but I never really took in count what they said because I felt it was exaggerated. I eventually corrected these errors as soon as I started to see the effect it was giving me.

      The reason why I underlined and put it in bold was to catch the audience attention and make the post look more engaging so that the reader can actually take these points into consideration. They are important factors that should be known and help also keep track of the main point of the letter.

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  2. Hi Astrid!

    I really liked your blog post! I understand exactly how you feel about procrastination because I do that a lot myself. I believe it was because high school came very easy for us that when college started all the habits that we had during high school also came with us. I had a difficult time adjusting during fall semester and I kept falling behind because I would always forget things easily. It is true that your agenda will definitely become your bestfriend! I wasn't really into writing down things in my agendas before but when college started, I felt the need to and it became very useful for me.

    Also thank you for the tip about professor's office hours, I will definitely stop by at their office if I need any help. I've always been really shy asking for help but I think that it would benefit me if I ask for help when I need to.

    Thank you!
    -Ara Mae Duenas

    ReplyDelete