learning profile

The overall common themes that I read in the text this semester were helpful. They were all things that I had covered before in high school but it was a good refresher to go over them again. The themes we had to read were Engage, Persist, Prioritize, read, learn, record, remember, assess, and think. I think one of the most important ones is persist. I think that in high school and even college it is important for one to persist. A lot of times when students get discouraged in homework assignments and even tests they want to quit. Persisting through that and trying to do your best even when it is hard is key to success I believe. Another good theme I thought was helpful was engage. I think if a student wants to learn and tries to engage in what they are doing, they are going to have better results than someone just trying to get through it. Teachers will more likely want to help a student who is engaged also. If a teacher sees a student just trying to get by with doing nothing and compares that to a kid who is making an effort to understand the material but is struggling, they are going to help them more.
I feel my strengths as a learner are ability to want to learn. When I go to a class I usually have a pretty open mind to what we are going to do that day. I think this helps my ability to learn as opposed to going in with a negative mindset. I am also a good listener. A lot of times students just want to get the class over with. I make sure I listen to everything the teacher has to say because that way I am able to get my homework done faster and more accurate. I think I could help a new student to this class learn good study habits. Ever since my parents switched me to a private school, good work and study habits were drilled into me. I think I would be a good person to help someone out in this aspect. I could help the student make a blog too, because I have made two in my day.
My weaknesses as a learner are probably a struggle to pay attention over a long period of time. If a class is long and drawn out, I tend to loose focus and show a lack of interest. Another weakness I think I have is test taking. When we are taking notes in class and doing homework I do almost perfect. When we transition from homework to tests is when I tend to struggle. I notice some other learners taking more detailed notes and I wonder what I would accomplish with those type of notes. My math homework seems to take up the most time when I am doing homework. It is so detailed in every aspect that I seem to take the most time on that when I am learning and doing homework. I am going to be taking intro to calculus next semester and I think it will be a struggle for me. Towards the end of my semester in College algebra I struggled more and things became more complex. I think this is just a foreshadowing of how Calculus will go, which is scary. I need to work on taking better notes and asking more questions when I do not understand something if I want to pass that class.
When I am analyzing what I have learned in this class it is hard to find a lot of things. I do not want to say that I have not learned anything, but to summarize a list of things is very difficult. I can say that I have learned things such as what type of community service my classmates have donated their time to. I can also say I have met new people I may not have taking my ordinary classes. I have also learned how to look up different job opportunities from the discovery website we did. That may be the most beneficial assignment, in my eyes, that we did all semester. The most important realization I had concerning student connect was when we had the quest speaker who showed us how to look up books from the library. It was then that I realized what this class was really made for, for us as freshmen. I thought this was important because in college there are a lot of papers assigned and you need to look up books for research, so I found that beneficial. If we did not know how to look up a book of a particular genre, we now know how because of student connect class.
The merits and relevance of the assignments we did in this class were different in relevance. Some assignments we did I found more important than others. At the beginning of the year, I thought the class would be pointless because of the quiz we did on the electric quizzers. For some reason, it just seemed kind of corny to me. I think the blogs we did were kind of time consuming. I understand we have to have some kind of material to make up our grade, but the blogs just seemed like busy work to me. Don’t get me wrong, the assignments we had to do were of good meaning and had a good reason behind them, it just seemed really repetitive to me from what I had to do in high school. We always did assignments like the blogs so when I knew we had to do those same types of things it was kind of like “here we go again.” I also did not find the rubrics of any relevance either. I know that was probably your way of taking attendance, I just didn’t like the questions we had to answer on the back every day. I think some assignments were meaningful like the Butler resources blog. That could be very useful if you ever find yourself in one of those situations.
Having to do an analysis of the course work from my viewpoint as a learner is kind of easy. As a learner, I catch on pretty quick and there was nothing to ever catch onto in this class. As a learner, this class is more kind of you have to take it. In that case I think the teachers try to make it as “fun” as possible, yet still try to teach important concepts at the same time. I don’t think we can drop the blogs because they make up the greatest chunk of our grade. That seems to be the biggest hassle to me. If we could just show up to class and learn material and show we know our way around the library and campus I think we should be able to test out. I think the goal of the class is to make sure we are connected to the campus through different ways and if we can master them I think we should be able to test out. I think the movie we watched over drinking should be kept because as many times as you watch movies like that, they always put you in check and make you think about your actions.
If I were to help students who take this class in the future to survive I would start out by telling them it is only about eight weeks of class. I did not get this class until after the first quarter of the semester. I think this was a blessing in disguise because in taking this class then, you get a built in week off because of Thanksgiving break. What I know now that I wish I knew when I came in to this class were that most classes are very time consuming. It seemed like every class we were doing something whether it be group discussions or a reading assignment we were always busy. I thought that we wouldn’t ever be in class much because I thought we could just get by with doing the blogs online and get out of class early or not have to come at all. The three things to keep your sanity in this class are 1. Patience , 2. Persistence , and 3. Dedication. If you can bring those three things consistently, you will survive student connect.
Unfortunately, my experiences as a learner in this class will not have that big of an impact on the way I live and work. I am almost certain that this eight week class has not altered my life that much that it affects the way I live and work. I might be looking at this question or even this whole assignment a bit pessimistic. I just really feel I should be honest while I’m doing this assessment of this class. I believe that I might take away acceptance of a wide variety of things from this class. That may be the greatest way that it would affect my life and the way I live because I know I’ve gotten through something where I didn’t really want to be there, but I got through it and that could be beneficial to look back upon. The instructor was really resourceful and was available at all times. I had nothing bad to say about the instructor because I know she isn’t the reason I have to take this class. Every freshmen has to go through a class like this sometime in their life. The end.

Butler Resources

I am choosing case study number three. Some ideas I have for helping this student is to go see some type of security officer right away. On the butler website there is a link to campus safety. I would tell her to go there. Here is the link to the butler safety/security site http://www.butlercc.edu/safety/notices.cfm. Another idea I had was to talk to a local investigator. The link for that is www.co.el-dorado.ca.us/eldoda/invdiv.html. Also, I would tell the girl to call her parents for help, and there is no link for that. The fourth idea I have is to talk to state officials or learn the laws on computer harrassment. The link to this is www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/cip/stalk99.htm. The last idea I have is to talk to volunteers that help talk to victims about being stalked online to help comfort them. The link to this is www.karisable.com/crpcstalk.htm.

Academic Honesty

Academic honesty to me is very simple. My personal definition is doing the right thing on your homework at all times. This includes typing papers, doing assignments at home, doing assignments in class and anything related to that. Some of the issues surrounding academic honesty are with students who cheat on anything they can. Some students will copy and paste anything they find off of the internet for a research paper. Other students will just look off of another students homework if they didn't get theirs done. This is one of the reasons students resort to academic dishonesty. Another reason is that students are just lazy. If they have homework, they just procrastinate and have no other option than to cheat to get it done. I have been in this situation before. Some suggestions for avoiding academic dishonesty are to not procrastinate. Students should have good time management and start doing assignments on time so they do not have to resort to cheating. Once students start to get into bad habits of cheating, it is hard to break that cycle. The only way for me to ever really stop was to get caught. And when I did get caught the only way to really stop me was to punish me. You can always get caught cheating, but most the time you never get punished for it majorly.

These are five websites that deal with academic honesty and integrity. Also sites to help with studying.

1. www.academicintegrity.cas.psu.edu
2. www.academichonesty.anu.edu.au
3. www.how-to-study.com
4. www.studygs.net
5. www.study-skills.ca

Academic Plan

My reason for going to college was to further me education. With a better education I will be able to get a better job. With a better job I will be able to make better money. Going to college was always a goal of mine. It was almost expected of me, there was never really any doubt that I would not go to college. I am planning on graduating from Butler with an Associates Degree. I am planning on studying Business Administration. With a degree in this, I will be able to go into any business related field because most require that. This means I have to take more math and business classes during my time at Butler. After my two years at Butler I am planning on transferring to a four year school. I am going to then work to get my Bachelors degree becuase most likely I am going to need more than a two year degree for the type of job I am going to want.

These websites here are all helpful links to Business Administration jobs, studies and career decisons.

1. www.dana.edu/careerservices/career_business.html
2. www.iseek.org/sv/12000.jsp?code=04
3. www.computercareercenter.com/mainpages/business_study_info.htm
4. www.iseek.org/sv/Study?id=22030:160600
5. http://www.career-edu.com/Pages/business-schools.htm?src=msn&kw=business%20administration%20study

Community Service

Three issues that trouble me the most are homelessness and poverty, hunger, and abuse. The one specific issue that I will cover is hunger. I found a website on hunger called www.worldhungeryear.org. They use their worldwide networking to help create opportunities for smaller grassroots organizations. They have raised over $6 million dollars for these organizations. They have a way for music artists to help donate money straight to these grassroots organizations and in 1999 the artists raised about $1.5 million from just donating from their concerts. Their website has a tab in it where you can get more information to join their network, if you are hungry you can get help, or if you want to get more involved there are links for all of those. One idea I have for hunger in the community is to have food drives and bake sales and donate all the money to local hunger charities. Another idea I have is to actually team up with the website I mentioned above and have music artists come and have a concert for local community charities. One of the last ideas I have to help hunger in the local community is to try and set up local diners such as the Lord's Diner in Wichita. They serve almost 400 people a night and they only serve one meal a day. Maybe in smaller communities there can be places set up similar to that and it wouldn't have to cost as much as it does to run one in a big city. I'm sure if there are enough people involved in a group and they asked local restaurants to help hunger in their own community they would be more than happy to help the situation.

Time Management

My time is very limited these days. I have nineteen hours this semester. My classes are College Algebra, Public speaking, English Comp. 1, Intro to theatre art, this class, and Substance Abuse Awareness. These classes take up my time from about 8 to 12 and then I have basketball practice. Basketball practice can take my time up from about 1:30 to 6:30 on any given day. It just depends on what we are doing that day. When I poorly manage my time I feel disappointed when I find out what I was supposed to do. When I manage my time well and I do good on tests and assignments I feel proud of myself. It always feels good to succeed. In high school I managed my time perfectly but now in college it's more lax. My high school was almost like a mini-college. Everything they did for us was to "prepare us" for the next level of education. In college you don't have every teacher always reminding you to do things. It is more responsibility for you as a student, which takes more time. I like it that way though because you get a feeling like everything is on your shoulders. Some things that can help stress are going to tutors or mentors in the college. Those can help you out a lot if you are struggling.

Coping with Change

The biggest change for me within the past year has probably been adjusting to leaving important people in my life behind. It is always hard for me to leave anything, not just people that I grow close to, behind. My best friend was a year older than me so I had already gone through him leaving for college that previous year. When it was time for me to go to college it was still difficult but I knew it wouldn't be that long before I saw my friends or my family again. Change is hard for me because I am scared some things will never be the same. I have come to the belief that it is easier to just let things happen and if it is meant to be, it will happen. I believe change is necessary because if you never change, you will never experience anything different. As hard as change can be I think it is good for everyone. College is different than high school in a couple different ways. I think college is easier in a lot of ways. All the teachers aren't trying to get you in trouble all the time. There is no dress code in college. I had a dress code since I was in third grade. I think classes are a lot more lax than my high school classes. My high school seemed like it was fifty times harder than college is now. I am thankful for that though. These are a few ways I have coped with change.