Moving Me Towards by Career

¶ … moving me towards by career goals. I see my education in part as a means to an end, so in that it is a four-year progression. However, I also want my education to be meaningful. In that, I think the first semester has been mostly about laying the groundwork for future growth. In the coming years, I expect that this foundation is going to pay dividends as I tackle more specific subject matter, choose a major and that sort of thing. I genuinely look forward to this, as while the generalized approach has me learning interesting things, it does lack the focus that I will have in my junior and senior years especially. Right now, my classes are meeting my expectations, but my expectations are not all that high -- I just want to get ready for when I can pursue a subject for which I have a lot of passion.

I think that I will be better-prepared next semester for my coursework. There were times when I felt that I had underestimated how much of a big step up college is from high school, and maybe underperformed because my organization and preparation were not where they needed to be. So that is something I will improve upon for the coming semester.

I feel that I am not doing the best in every class, but this isn't a reflection of overall effort, just of preparation as I noted. I think next semester I will benefit from taking a more proactive approach to my studies. If you miss classes, or don't read the books as assigned, you get behind quickly at this level and it is hard to catch up. So next semester, I will be more disciplined to stay on top of my coursework, something that might require better planning in order to make sure that I have enough time for that. Part of succeeding at this level is learning how to be a student, and those are the habits that I need to develop. Out of necessity, I also developed this past semester crunch time preparation skills, and those may well come in handy in future semesters.

The sort of persona growth that I am expecting is that I want to do two things. I want to learn how to learn, first of all. That is something where I hope to take the lessons I learned last semester and change some of my habits so that I learn more efficiently and effectively next semester. Over time, what I hope to get is a lot more knowledge, but even more than just learning things I want to learn the higher-level thinking that people get from college. You hear people say that it is not what you learn but how you learn it, and that higher-level thinking is a skill that you can take with you long past your college career. In that sense, I feel that this process as it plays out will really help me get to be the person that I want to be.

For the most part, I assume I am getting the best educational experience possible. It's been good, but I don't have a point of comparison. As long as I am learning, growing and progressing towards becoming the person I want to be, I am happy, and that is what matters. I am probably learning just as much outside the classroom, as you know this is a big part of someone's life and that's how it is for me. I think I will be transformed in the course of my college.