What Do I Think of College Now

When I think about college I think about diversity, making new friends, learning about new people, and hard work. This month of being at The University of Tennessee at Knoxville I meet many new friends and started to build a family within the UT LEAD program. Also, in being here I have many diverse people and shared some things in common with them. I learned about their history and background information and most of them were like mine; Father not in the picture when growing up, poor family, or maybe even a 1^st generation college student. This really opened my eyes and made me see that I wasn’t alone in my situation. I could find someone else to talk to and have him or her relate to my problems. College is about helping yourself and each other. One of the things they say in orientation is look to the left and look to the right, that person sitting next to you may not be here the next semester. But I think what they did not stress was that person may also end up being your friend or someone that may help you in the future or through your college career. Now that I have entered college I see the world different than before. I see a truckload of opportunity. It is all about how willing and hard you want to work for it.

Managing Stress

Managing Stress can be even more stressful if you don’t know how you manage it. Here are some ways to do it; coping with stress, recognizing stress, reducing stress, and analyzing stress. First you must recognize stress. You can do this by seeing if your stress is health or medical, mental or emotional, or behavioral. This can range for headaches to dryness of the throat. If you are having over 5 signs of stress then you are overly stressed. Now you need to analyze your stress and see how you can make it better. Think about what stresses you out, why does it stress you out, and how you can stop it from stressing you out. Now develop a game plan to reduce stress. This can be done by music, breathing exercise, relaxation routine, visualization, clearing your mind, energy-release activities, talking it out, and laughing. This all can help you manage your stress better.

Memory Principles

Controlling memory can be a hard thing to do. Most people don’t know how their brain functions. But memory is all about making an effort to remember things, controlling the amount of information your taken, strengthening your neural traces, and allowing time to solidify your pathways. To remember something you must 1st give an effort to remembering. Meaning if you want to remember something you most 1st intent to remember. If you enter the class not trying to or thinking about remembering then you want remember. Next in line is controlling the amount of information given. You have to be selective of what the teacher is saying, more than likely they will put more action into words and information that you need to know. Strengthening your neural traces means you most recite, visualize, and associate the teacher’s information with something that can help you remember. Last but not least, is allowing time to solidify pathways. This means sitting down and thinking about the information giving and practice using it. Doing this will help you get better use of your memory.

Critical incident

When I was younger I got into many fights. I always got suspended from school, and when I got suspended from school I fought at day care. As I started my transition from elementary school to middle school, I begin to think about what I want to do with my life. Did I really want to fight everyday for the rest of my life? I also started to learn that when fighting in middle school you will be sent to juvenile detention, and I didn’t want that. So there I begin to think about how I could stop fighting and control the things that make me mad. What steps could I take to gain better control of myself? I begin to do more critical thinking than I ever did in my life, so that I could have a successful future and learn how to solve my problems without fighting. From then until now I haven’t had a fight.

Strong Interest Inventory

I believe that my Strong Interest Inventory test unlocked my enter thoughts. My test results said that I would like Military and Athletics the most and I might like being an elementary school teacher. This test really made me think about the school teacher part. I always said that I never wanted to be a school teacher. Then I realized that all the jobs that worked, I always work with kids. I used to work at a place with a teacher in the classroom where I helped the teacher with explaining things to little kids. My second job was at an amusement park, and I worked in the playground and played with the kids for 12 hours a day and I loved it. The Military and Athletics part stood out to me, because the military was always my back up plan if college doesn’t workout. Also, I love sports and love to workout and stay in shape, and when I can’t workout, I go crazy. I believe this test was great and gave me a better understanding of me.

College Essentials and College Etiquette

Entering college for the first time can be a confusing and complicated if you have no one to help you. Here are some tips to help you with college essentials and college etiquette. First you must know your college essential resources. These are things such as your college catalog, student handbook, schedule book, and syllabus. These are the key tools to knowing your job as a college student and your college protocols and etiquettes. Other important informational resources are your academic advisor and student services. Using these two will help you register for a new term with ease. Academic Advisor or there to help you in the course of your year and give you advise on the class you need to take for your major. Remember that they can’t make you take a class its all your choice. It’s your education and your money you’re spending. They are just here to help guild you if you let them.

Test taking strategies

Taking tests can be a difficult task if you are not a good test taker. Here are some strategies to make taking test easier. Some great ways to prepare for finals or just normal test are by budgeting your time in taking the test and predicting the test questions. Budgeting your time is just managing your time to make sure you don’t stay on one question to long and making it so you will have enough time to answer all questions to the best are your ability. Predicting your test questions just means you have to know what your test is going to be to plan out the best outcome. These test consist of true/false, multiple choice, fill in the blank, and matching. True and false test or always-50/50 chance you get it right or wrong. These test can be tricky always remember if one word in the statement is wrong then the whole thing is wrong. On multiple choice questions remember to read all answers and choose the best one. For fill in the blank questions you much talk yourself and chance the best answer you can come up with. In matching make sure you read every last word before putting an answer and cross out the ones you used. By using these strategies you will have an easier time taken test.