5V Agency

Word Of The Week:

Agency- agency has to do with power and initiative. Everyone has agency and is able to put it to use. It is an action that you make yourself in order to get things done. In class we talked about study skills and time management. If you use your agency, which is power and initiative, you will be able to get things done.

More Vocab:

We went over a big chapter in my media class this week on persuasion and culture. One term we went over this week was mainstream culture. Mainstream culture is the core beliefs, values, and behaviors that have part of the American dialogue since the 1600’s and that have been maintained and accepted by a majority of Americans.

Another term this chapter talked about was multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is existence of diverse, and often competing or conflicting, cultural beliefs, values, and behaviors in one culture.

5A The Past Four Weeks

How I got through my first four weeks of college:

These first four weeks have gone by so fast yet so much has happened in just a month. The first week of school was definitely rough at first. I had a hard time getting used to everything and found it difficult to get my work done since there was so much going on. As the weeks progressed I found it easier to get my work done. One thing that was difficult about getting my work done was having people always around you. When I do my work I need complete silence, just having my roommate in the same room as me distracts me. I normally do my work around her schedule so when she is at work or in class is when I get most of my assignments and studying done. I haven’t had any failures but I do think I could be doing better for sure. Compared to high school I’ve been doing much more work but I think I need to be doing more to get the grades I want.

This week for class we went over a lot of reading that were towards college students and how to improve your academic habits. A lot of them I found helpful and will us some of the tips they gave me.  One of the readings was on paper writing, I often have trouble with essays and since I have a writing class I have papers due weekly. When I get a writing assignment I normally hold it off until the day before then I have a hard time thinking about what to write and start repeating myself. The reading on paper writing gives good advice that I know would help me, here are some tips:

•  Don’t hold off the paper, work on it immediately
•  Make progress in small batches, 1-2 hours a day
•  Finish first draft well before the dead line
•  Always edit
•  Spend a lot of time thinking about what your saying and why your saying it

Another article was on test taking, I myself am horrible at test taking and get a lot of anxiety from it, I thought the tips were helpful and something I want to try doing next I have a test.

•  Reorder questions so that you do all the ones you know first
•  Create time budget by doing the problems that are more time consuming first
•  Change your goal from letter grade to point grab
•  When stumped go back to other questions to make them better

Overall, my biggest goal is to get god grades and like I said before I believe that I can do better and get better grades than I am right now. In order to do that I think I need to take things one step at a time and spend more time on my work to really understand the material.

5B How I Spend my Time

I was very surprised on where all my time went at the end of the time study. This study definitely taught me that I need to change the way I schedule my day, and really work on time management. One thing that stood out was the amount of hours I spend doing homework versus socializing. This past week I spent roughly around 17 hours doing homework and 27 socializing. This surprised me because I feel like I do so much more homework than that. This study made me realize that I need to start saying no to my friends if I want to get good grades. I do think getting 30-40 hours of work in a week is a good amount especially since we spend such little time in the classroom. With all the time there is during the week it is possible to get that amount of hours in but I do need to revise my daily schedule to make that work.

What shocked me the most was how much time I spent getting ready and eating, which was 24 hours. Usually when I eat I go with my friends and we go to Conn. After we eat we normally sit there for an hour or so just talking. I didn’t realize how much time it wasted though until now, so that’s something I need to change. Another thing that caused problems for me was taking naps. I focus most during the day once it hits 6:00 I don’t like doing homework because I can never focus on anything. The problem is that once I get out of class I take a nap and sometimes I don’t wake up until 4-5. Then when I wake up I don’t feel like doing my work or I do for about an hour until 6:00.

There are a lot of things I need to do to my daily schedule. Like I said before I want to get good grades and be able to get all A’s and in order to do so I really need to change my schedule around. First I need to eliminate the amount of time I spend at Conn because I can be getting a lot of things done with that time. Second I think it would be a good idea if I went to the gym after class instead of taking a nap that way I have more energy and am able to do my work right after rather than sleeping. Overall, I need to focus more on the amount of hours I’m putting into school work because 17 isn’t enough considering there is 168 hours in a week.

5I Football Game!

This week I went to the football game. There was a tailgate before the game, there was a lot of food and free shirts were being given out, then the game started around 7:00. I’m really not into football and I couldn’t tell you a thing about it but it ended up being tons of fun! I went with a group of my friends and we surprisingly stayed the whole time. The weather was perfect and we had perfect seats. Our team played against Merrimack College and we won. The end score was 40, 34. I really enjoyed watching the game with my friends and will most likely be attending many more sports event with them!

4B What do you think?

Inquiry Questions

How do you increase your amount of will power, and can you do this?

It is possible for someone to increase his or her will power. In order to increase will power you need to be self-motivated and have self-control. In college many students find it hard to manage their time and get all their homework done with allowing them enough time to do so. One way to fix this is to create a daily/weekly schedule that tells you when to get your work done. It’s easy to create a schedule but the trick is to stick with it so you don’t get behind, it’s also a way to train your brain. Another example would be going to the gym. Personally I always say I’m going to the gym after class but I never have the motive to do so. A way to fix this would be to set a time to go and stay with it weekly. In order to increase my will power I need to be self motivated and practice getting used to the same routine.

I’ve read a lot on this marshmallow experiment and I want to know if it really affects their SAT scores in the future.

So if you don’t know about the experiment, this guy took a group of four years olds and put a marshmallow in front of them and told them if they didn’t eat it for 50 minutes they would get a second marshmallow. Supposedly those who ate the marshmallow without waiting scored lower on the SAT’s than those who didn’t eat it. I don’t think this is true, to me it just seems silly that something that they did 14 years ago could effect how they score on a test. I do find this experiment interesting but I’m not so sure I believe the part about SAT’s scores. One article I read was “Just let them eat the marshmallow” I agreed with this article because it also stated that they didn’t find any correlation between the kids and there test scores.