Learning Profile.

1. I didn’t really read all of the text. After I read the first couple of chapters I realized that the things that the book were talking about weren’t really that interesting. If we are going to have to read these kinds of things then they need to find an author that can write about them in a way that will hold a college students attention. I know that all of the themes are ways to better yourself in the newly found college environment. The only thing in this book that I liked was the personality tests because it was an activity and it was an interesting thing to learn about. I also read the chapter about Engage and it really wasn’t that bad, it was also kind of relevant to my life because I’m bad at interacting with new people. I need to read the Persist chapter with more clarity because I’m also bad at managing my money. Money burns holes in my pocket so I have to spend it.
2. I feel that my strengths as a learner are reading and memory. Most of the time, I just read the text and remembering what it was that I read. Another thing that I’m good as in finding information, that’s why I’m most successful at open-book tests. As far as helping a new student in this class I was good at setting up the blog and things like that. I had to help Cullen with a lot of things on the computer and a few other people asked for help on things that were being done in class. I think that I’m good at explaining things to people in a way that they understand. I’m also good at being the person in charge as far as group activities go. For some reason, people just pick me to be the person in charge of everything. I was always being volunteered for things like writing everything down, holding on to everything we needed and everyone just assumed that I would be the bossy one. It’s pretty much always been like that for me. 3. I wish that I could figure out a more effective way of studying for the classes that have many things that I have to remember and that I could find a way to motivate myself to actually study. My memory just from reading can only comprehend so many things at once. I’m especially bad at studying for anatomy and physiology. The only reason I’ve passed my tests is because we help set up for our lab exams and we figure out the answers while we’re doing it. It would probably help if I scheduled my time more wisely. I tend to get caught up in the moment of things and plan on something when I should be spending my time studying or doing homework. I feel bad telling people no, so I spend a lot of time with my friends. I need to prioritize better so that I can give myself more time to do the things I need to do for my classes. Honestly, I’m surprised that I’ve faired as well as I have in most of my classes. Half the time I’m honestly amazed at my test scores. Which is a bad thing in ways, I can’t depend on that kind of luck for the rest of my college career. 4. The main thing that I have gotten out of this class is that I am better at talking to people that I don’t know very well about things that I normally wouldn’t. I can be a really shy person around people that I’m not familiar with. I’m afraid of offending people so it’s hard for me to tell people my opinion on things. I don’t like it when people step on my toes so I try to not do it to other people. I like them to get to know what kind of person I am before I do that so they won’t judge me too harshly. This class has kind of forced me to blindingly tell people what I think and how I feel. It has been a hard thing for to do and I’m still not that good at doing it. However, after a lot of the activities we’ve done I’ve realized that the majority of people have very similar opinions. They might not agree completely but they definitely haven’t completely disagreed with me either. Knowing that has made it slightly more comfortable for me to open up to people that I don’t know. 5. The activity that we did with the Discover program was particularly helpful to me because I’d been debating about what career I wanted to go into. After doing that on the computer it helped me to decide. It helped to point me in the right direction for career options. I also felt that Judy Bastin’s presentation on the database was very relevant to my life. I’m going to be needing that kind of information throughout my college years so that I can do all of my research and hopefully do it with more ease now. The thing that I felt wasn’t very relevant to my life was academic honesty. All we did was write about why we thought it was happening and how we thought it could change. Honestly, I don’t think that there is anything that anybody could do to keep people from cheating. Sadly, it has become a way of life for a lot of students, not only in college but throughout high school too. Cheating off of someone else is how a lot of people get through their classes. I also didn’t really like doing the activity where we had to walk around and get people to initial by the questions we had picked. I think that there are better ways to get students in the class to interact. I know that all I did was ask the other students to just initial one. Most of us were just saying, “Will you sign mine?” (842)
6. Personally, I think that student connect is a really stupid class. To me it seemed really unnecessary. We didn’t really learn anything new. All it was good for was to help us think about things that we normally wouldn’t have thought about. If you were to keep anything in this class I think that it should be the Academic Plan. Especially when we had to get on the Discover program and take the tests to help us figure out what kinds of careers we could be good at. I also think that the Community Service thing should be kept. College students tend to get wrapped up in things that are happening to them and people close to them. With the Community Service group discussion we talked about the problems that were happening in our community and around the world. I definitely think that if you are going to do the Butler Resources then you should alter it in a way that makes students think a little more, I think that our case studies weren’t that great. We need to have things that are a little more relevant to our own lives. That way we might actually be able to use the resources that we had to find.
7. Really the only thing that you have to do to be able to pass this course is to show up and make sure that all of your blogs are done by the last day of class. I wish that I would’ve known that I could take this course online and never actually had to go to a class. The actual class time really isn’t that important except for the days that we actually did something like our group discussions and the day of Judy Bastin’s presentation. I really don’t think that students should be forced to take this class. Some advice would be that it may suck to have to go to class but its over before you know it. Its not that bad and trust me you don’t want to have to take it twice in the same year so you might as well just go the first time around. Also, if you have the option take the course online that way you can finish things on your own time and don’t have to wait around for everyone else. The group activities aren’t that riveting anyways, too many students don’t take things seriously.
8. Honestly, things in my life really won’t change that much. I have gotten better at writing things down that I need to remember so that it won’t be as easy for me to use the excuse of forgetting. I will most likely still interact in the same ways with people as I did before this class. If we were forced to try and change our ways every single day of these last eight weeks then things might be different for me in the future. Talking about ways in which I need to change are unfortunately, not effective in actually changing me. I am the kind of person who doesn’t take well to a lot of change. I like me just the way I am right now even when I feel bad about not studying for the test that I should have. Maybe one day I will learn how it is that I can effectively change the way I study, manage my time, and interact with people but that day is definitely not today. Changing isn’t easy, it takes time a lot more than the college gives us in student connect class.

Butler Resources.

Jessica could go to the 15000 building and talk to someone in Butler’s health services. Going to the health services would help her find out any information that she feels that she should know about this pregnancy. She could also go to the 600 building and talk to someone in the advising area of the Hubbard Center. As for the resources in the community she could got to the Susan B. Allen Memorial hospital on Central, and talk to a doctor about her options and whatever else. If she would like to do her own researching Butler’s library is right above the Hubbard center in the 600 building or she could go to El Dorado’s Bradford Memorial library on Washington Street. And of course there is always the internet.

http://www.butlercc.edu/health_services/index.cfm
http://www.butlercc.edu/advising/index.cfm
http://www.sbamh.com/
http://www.butlercc.edu/nixon_library/index.cfm
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/library/bradford/

Academic Honesty.

Plagiarism is defined as the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work. I think that most students resort to academic honesty because they are too lazy, too busy or they just forgot. Some students know that they have homework that they need to finish but they also know that they have someone to copy off of if they need to so they just choose to do copy their friends work instead of doing it themselves. Other students that have to work full time jobs and/or take care of their families simply just can’t find the time to do the work themselves because they have other more important things to do. The last kind of student is the forgetful kind. They get so caught up in things that are happening around them that they just push that homework assignment into the back of their minds. Avoiding academic dishonesty is hard, as wrong as it may be many students are guilty of it. Thanks to the internet, it is easier for English professors to catch students that are plagiarizing but that still leaves out all the other professors. Maybe if professors could think of a way to help remind those forgetful students we could eliminate one group. As for the others, making students do most of their work in class would help lower the rates of academic dishonesty by allowing the professor to watch the students do their work.ized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.

Academic Plan.

My plan for college is to transfer into the BEST program. BEST is a program that will allow me to take all of my classes here at Butler that I need to graduate from Emporia State with a Bachelors of Science degree in elementary education. BEST stands for Butler and Emporia from Students to Teachers. I could go to Emporia if I really wanted. It all depends on how I feel after my two years at Butler. I chose elementary education as a major because I've always loved working with kids and I've had several teachers tell me that it would be a good career for me. When I was younger being a teacher was my dream so I decided to take my teachers' advice and give teaching a try. I know that teachers don’t make an excellent amount of money but that really doesn’t bother me. I love working with kids and I can't think of a better way to do that than to be an elementary school teacher.



http://lifelong.emporia.edu/eled/bcc/index.htm
http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/majors/majorBasics.asp?majorID=92
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos069.htm
http://site.educ.indiana.edu/Default.aspx?alias=site.educ.indiana.edu/elemed
http://www.emporia.edu/lifelong/eled/bcc/index.htm

Community Service.

One thing in America that bothers me the most is medically uninsured Americans. According to statistics, in the United States their are currently about 47 milllion people without medical insurance and about 50 million people who are currently underinsured. That is a whole lot of people paying medical bills out of pocket or completely avoiding hospitals as much as possible. The one main thing that people are doing to help this is a bill called H.R. 676, which is a bill proposing national medical health. If this bill were to pass through then we could completely eliminate health insurance companies and all medical facilities would be funded by the government so we wouldn't have to pay for anything. The documentary SiCKO directed by Michael Moore really brought this issue to my attention. He filmed stories of people all across America that were either denied help from the insurance companies or didn't have insurance at all. He also filmed his interviews with people in Canada, Cuba and France, all of which have a national health system. One of the stories that really stuck in my mind was a story of a man that had kidney disease and his doctor told him that his chances of living would extremely increase if he got some kind of bone marrow treatment. His insurance wouldn't fund the treatment because they claimed that it was experimental. The man died not too long after that. The ways that I could help with this cause is to donate money, write a letter to a congressman, and to talk about the issue with anyone who will listen and help them to find ways that they can help too. In my opinion, everyone should watch the documentary SiCKO, it will really open your eyes.



Links:
http://protesthealthcare.org/index.htm
http://www.hr676.org/
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/checkup/

Time Management.

I'm really terrible at managing my time. Most of my time should be going towards studying but really it winds up being time spent with friends. I just can't resist a good time! There's never really been a time in my life that I managed my time wisely. But I know that what I really need to do is decide what is most important to me at this time in my life and work at saving more time to be able to do that. Its just hard deciding if getting good grades in school is more important than spending time with your friends and having fun. If I would budget my time more wisely than I would most likely have a better grade in my anatomy and physiology class and I would probably still care if I failed a test. But now that the semester is almost over and I have squandered all my time away I have failed too many tests to care anymore. I'm still passing with a C though! I have been studying more than usual lately so that I can at least keep that grade but it has been hard. I have noticed improvements in other classes as well. In high school I didn't ever care if I was late for class and in most of them I hardly paid attention, I have no clue how I passed high school with a 4.0 but thank god. Now that I'm in college I've discovered that paying attention makes things easier.

Coping with change.

College is different from high school on many levels. First off, there is much more freedom involved in college, the choice is now yours. Nobody’s telling you that if you don’t go to class you’re going to be in big trouble and nobody tells you to go to the office and get a tardy slip to be admitted into class if you are late. If you aren’t living at home you won’t have anyone screaming at you to wake up and go to class, so you actually have to talk yourself out of bed. Deciding if you actually want to drag yourself out of bed or push the snooze button and not worry about it becomes a daily major decision. Another big change is that you actually have to try to pass the class. In high school it was easy to just squeeze by in class if you did an okay job on all of your assignments. In college some of the professor’s don’t even give homework, they lecture, you listen and take tests. It’s a completely different environment. You don’t have a teacher standing in the front of the class constantly reminding you when you have something due, in college you hear it once or twice and after that you’d better just know it yourself or pray that someone around you knows. The biggest transition into college is deciding what’s important to you, whether its friends, work, parties, sports or homework.


http://www.body-meet-soul.com/coping-with-change.html