A For Awesome Start!

Whole Brain Thinking

I think that Inquiry taught me a few new things, but I think it mostly polished off things that I had already known or learned in High School. For example, I have improved on my organization skills, and I have learned that its way better to have things done a few weeks early than a few days before they are due. Prioritizing and professionalism are two important things that I have gained from my first semester here at southern, in part because of INQ but also in part because of me immersing myself in this crazy place called college.

I won’t lie when I tell you that my first month of college was hell. I hated it and I wasn’t afraid to let people know. I was doing about five to six hours of homework a night driving an oven of a car to and from New Haven every day and then missing out on anything fun that would happen at night here. So I started prioritizing and organizing, I wanted to give myself the best of both worlds in college, a great social life, and great grades.

I already knew that organization is key to doing well in college so it came as no surprise to me when we focused on it a lot at the beginning of the semester. However I learned that high school organization isn’t the same as college organization. Inquiry helped me to fine tune and tweak my studying and organization skills so that they could be used on a college level.

I color coded and marked up my assignment pad into two weeks in advance. In the classes were I had things to do every week I wrote it out every week for the entire semester. So every Tuesday and Thursday has written on it; “Blog.” Then every Monday I wrote down; “look at syllabuses” so every Monday I look at my syllabuses and split up the work for that week. This cut my homework time nearly in half. Sure there are some days like today where I take on a five hour work load, but these days are few and far. I know that if I follow my assignment pad I wont miss a beat and I will develop good study habits, which I have.

As I mentioned earlier I have also gained a sense of professionalism in my first semester here. I think that this can be greatly accredited to my new study habits. By always following the things I have written I always put forward good work and its always on time. I have also always followed through on the things that I say, or obligations that I have. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving the only class that I had was INQ and I didn’t really want to drive to New Haven in the middle of the day, but I did. I know that if I develop good habits now in studying and professionalism they will carry through into my professional work life.

Three of the projects we have had in this class were video assignments, which I honestly liked the best. I took video courses in high school so I am familiar with the programs and the technology. I even am pretty good with the technical things like the angles, music and different shots I learned back in high school. Since making movies is a form of art it is something that I enjoy. The video I most enjoyed making was the final video because it was the one with the most wiggle room. This assignment had the least amount of guide lines which I loved! It gave me a bunch of space to make my video stick out and be uniquely me. The newest thing that I learned from these assignments was how to upload to youtube. I could never quit figure that out before, but now that I have, I feel extremely accomplished.

I remember one of the first assignments we got, we had to get into our networking groups and make a short movie incorporating different words into it. In high school, whenever there was a group project I usually took charge and was the leader of the group. I would set up times to work on the project and divvy out the parts of the project to each member, put it all together and hand it in. But in this project we all worked together, it was something I had never done before, but I loved it. Everyone came together with ideas and everyone split the project themselves. It was something new, and while it wasn’t out of my comfort zone it was something I wasn’t used to and I liked it.

INQ has mainly taught me to organize my time and tasks, so that I am more professional in my work. It makes things so much easier and it makes me more time efficient. I have learned different ways of working with people that I can take with me in life and into the work force. I think that I still need a little bit more work on balancing my social and academic life. My academic life is still above my social life and I would love to see them both be balanced. I am staying on campus more and trying to spend more time with the people here since it is were most of my friends are. I might try to live on campus next year to see how I like that and see if it is worth it for me. Until then, I am just floating along the main stream of college classes and letting it all unfold in front of me.