Final Project

Final Video 

Final Thoughts

Over my first semester here at Southern Connecticut State University I have learned a great deal about myself.  I also feel as though I have gotten a feel for what’s expected of me as a college student.  I have had to take on a lot more responsibility with getting my work done, and also keeping up with my job and family and friends. 

I think I do need to work more on prioritizing my time and not procrastinating so much on bigger assignments.  I feel as if my grades could be better if I hadn’t waited so long to start assignments, or done them as good as I could of, instead of the bare minimum requirements. 

My biggest challenge at school has been my anxiety.  I ended up missing a lot of classes because I couldn’t get myself to show up.   I assume professors think I was just slacking off and didn’t feel like coming to class, but it was more than that.  I moved home because living at school made my anxiety levels a lot higher and then when I did live home, it was easier to make the decision to stay home from a day of classes because I was so far away from school. 

I’ve tried to force myself to go to school and get my work done despite my anxiety.  I tend to look at the big picture of things rather than take it one day at a time and I think this is one of my biggest downfalls.  There were times during the semester that I thought ‘there’s no way I can do x amount more weeks of this’.  But if I tried to look at it as, ‘today all I have to do is this and this’ it makes things a lot more manageable and easy.  I also hope that reflecting back on how fast this semester went by will be a good motivation for the rest of my career at Southern Connecticut State University. 

My biggest achievement would be getting a really excellent grade in one of the classes I was worried about.  It was a class on school health education and when I walked in the first day, I realized everyone in it was much older than me.  I didn’t think I’d be able to keep up with students who have had much more experience at college than I did, but I ended up getting the highest grade of the class on our first test and a really good grade on our second test.  I was also able to put my anxiety aside and present a lesson plan to a group of older, intimidating students and do a really good job with it. 

I was able to get good grades on the exams because I did a lot of studying for that particular class.  It was a lot of random facts thrown together on each test ranging from calculating a persons ideal heart rate when exercising to knowing where most injuries happen at school.  I took notes on my own time out of our book, and rewrote them as a studying method.  I learned in high school that copying notes worked well as a study strategy for me so I liked to use it for this class. 

My time management over this semester has improved a lot than what it was at the beginning.  I’ve done less going out and more staying in and getting work done. 

I think that in the rest of my time at SCSU I want to get much better grades than I have now, especially if I want any hope of getting into the nursing program.  I plan to spend more time on my work and keep better track of my assignments to make sure everything is turned in on time and done as well as I possibly can do it! :)

Life After College

I don't really know what to expect for my life after college because I don't know if I'm capable of reaching all the goals I've set.  In an ideal world, I would get an excellent GPA and be excepted into Southern's Nursing program at the end of my Sophomore year.  I'd complete everything on time and be out of here in 4 years. (Unfortunately, Southern has already set me up to go here for 5 by giving me the wrong classes my first semester.)  I'd get a job at Yale or Saint Raphaels (I think I heard they're merging?) in New Haven and maybe begin to specialize in working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  I've heard it's very hard to get into the NICU because of how many people want that job.  I'd hope to get a stable career and then work on getting married and having kids and all that other stuff!