End of the Semester Goal Log

            It has now been about eleven weeks since I set three goals to accomplish by the end of the semester. Speaking of the end of the semester, it’s here already! The last day of classes is in one week, followed by two days of final exams depending on the teacher and course. This means that this is the last update concerning the progress in accomplishing my goals. It’s hard to believe that the semester is basically over already, but the time definitely didn’t go unused. Not only have I been balancing schoolwork and my responsibilities outside of school, but I’ve been working towards accomplishing the goals that I set out for myself.

            It has never been more important to implement my goal of studying than it is now. This is because the end of the semester brings finals along with it. I will have to implement all of my progress from the rest of the semester in order to get the best results possible on my finals. This means that I will have to review my notes, use the flash cards that I made, and try to get any work done ahead of time so that I’m not pressured when it is time to study. Based on my past discoveries, getting plenty of sleep will help me to prepare for finals, because it will leave my mind fresh and willing to study.  Another thing that I’ve noticed helps to keep me more focused is to plan out my meals, because then I know when and what I’ll eat, so that I don’t get distracted by my hunger. It is more important to finish strong, now more than ever. I have completed the majority of my workload for my classes, but only finals in some of them remain and I have to guard against complacency. I can already feel the rush to get to the end of the semester, but I have to just try to take it slow and make sure that I do what I need to do.

            I guess you could say that one good aspect of the end of the semester is the fact that it forces the students to come together. Students are now frequently asking each other for help, whether it be studying homework, or simply asking when assignments are due. This has made it a lot easier to reach out and open up to people. For once, people seem to be approaching me asking for help and asking when assignments are due. Honestly, it’s a good feeling because I don’t have to make as much of an effort, but the results are the same. I feel like what I have done throughout the semester is paying off. By working hard, showing that I know the material in the classes, and reaching out to people throughout the semester, I have shown people that I can be a pretty good source for help. Most students can use all the help they can get during finals week, myself included.

            Clearing my mind of negative thoughts and focusing on the positive will also be key for me as the semester winds down. I think it can be pretty easy to become overwhelmed at the end of the semester, because even when you finish your work, you still always have finals looming in the back of your mind. I think I’ll just have to take the approach of dealing with one day at a time in order to maintain my focus. If I just live in the moment, my mind will be less stressed, which in turn makes a more productive mind. I think that my daily workouts will continue to be a source of relief and refocusing, because they are truly the only part of the day where I’m not thinking about anything else other than the task at hand. I’ve also been trying a few other little tricks such as playing calming music (including Christmas music) in order to keep myself calm and relaxed throughout the day. My roommate and I have even strung up some Christmas lights in our room. We now almost always leave the lights off, except for the Christmas lights, which leave the perfect amount of lighting in the room. The room is definitely darker, but I think it is definitely more calming; so calming in fact, that I have utilized it to help catch up any sleep when I feel tired or groggy.

            I’ve actually found a blog where a student gives tips for getting through finals week. I think the blog really appeals to me because it is from the student’s point of view rather than from a teacher’s point of view. Nobody knows what students are growing through more than other students. One of the points that the author mentions is that you should set a reward aside for yourself for when you’re done studying or working on an assignment. I can relate to this because I often do the same, by working before lunch and then using lunch as my reward for the work I’ve done. It is also comforting to know that once I’m done with finals, I can go home and relax, and then I get to enjoy Christmas. I know for a fact that Christmas will be great this year, because I’ve ordered P90X2 and I got a call from home the other day asking if I was expecting any big boxes from that particular company. That call made my day and now gives me something to work towards, which will help ensure that I finish the semester strong.

Here is the blog I mentioned: http://ecampusblog.com/2010/11/tips-keeping-focused-finals-week/

How College Has Changed Me, So Far...

            Now that the Fall 2011 semester is almost over, it’s time to look back and reflect on the time spent here at Paul Smith’s College. My first semester at college has been a mix of transitions and challenges, but the good thing about challenges is that they make you better when you overcome them. The transitions and challenges I have experienced here at college have definitely made me grow as a student, and more importantly as a person. I feel as though I’ve kicked some old habits and traded them in for some new ones, but in the end I’m still the same person, just a little more polished and experienced, I guess you could say.

            I’d say that most of my growth has come in the form of a new sense of responsibility and maturity. I guess you could say that I’ve always kind of considered myself to be somewhat mature, but I never really had to use that maturity on a day-to-day basis like I do here at college. In high school, you make think you’re mature because there are so many middle school kids and underclassmen below you. The truth is that you’re pretty much fostered by the teachers and faculty even in your senior year. You have to ask to go to the bathroom and teachers are regarded as having so much more stature than you, because you’re still just a kid. I think I’ve grown in college because I’ve had experience being treated as an adult, or more of an equal. For example, most professors don’t try to assert their dominance over the students by saying that you must call them “Dr.” such-and-such. Most professors prefer that you call them by their first name, which I think can be good practice for the real world. It may sound silly, but being treated as an adult and having experience in conversing and working with adults has made me, along with most other students, more of an adult.

            I’ve also noticed how much more willing I am to embrace responsibility and to push myself. One of the nice things about college is that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Everything that you do is up to you. You don’t have your professors in your ear asking if you’ve started that report that’s due at the end of the week, or if you’ve done the reading that they assigned the day before. It is left up to you to do the work, to study, and to make the most out of your college experience. I don’t mean to sound all “high and mighty”, but I can’t help but feel good about how I’m doing when I see kids that aren’t wiling to push themselves, or take that responsibility upon themselves. I initially feel bad for them because I think of how they’re wasting their time here, but then it makes me feel good, because I know that even though I may not be having as much fun as them, I’m going to be better prepared for the real world in the end. I know that my first responsibility here at college is to study, do the work, and learn. Having fun, growing up, and becoming more responsible are just things that develop along the way if you take the responsibility to do the work. I know that I already feel more ready for the real world because I have functioned on my own for a semester and I have been able to push myself and take on additional responsibilities much more easily than in high school.

            I also feel as though I have become much more dependent upon myself, but at the same time, I am now able to more easily reach out to others. College is nice because you are responsible for getting all of your school work done, but at the same time, you’re responsible for doing your laundry, keeping your room clean, and managing your finances along with several other things. You have nobody else to lean on, but yourself. I think this has made me a better person, because I have learned how to balance all of these things without assistance from others. The funny thing about college is that I have grown to be able to reach out to others more, now than ever before. While I may rely on myself to get things done, I’ve learned to rely on friends and other people around campus to make myself a better-rounded person. I’m not just some hermit who sits in his dorm room all day doing homework and thinking about responsibility. No way. I’ve learned, now more than ever, that friends and other people are there to help you out and to make you a better person in the end. The only catch is that you have to be willing to reach out to those friends and other people in order for them to be able to help. I feel as though I’ve learned how to reach out to other people while I’ve been here at college, and I feel better for it.

            Like I do with just about everything in life, I relate responsibility back to sports or working out. When I think of responsibility in working out, I think of a common Tony Horton quote. Tony says, “Don’t just kinda’ do it!”. In this quote, Tony is talking about how some people drag themselves through a workout, just to say that they did the workout. Working out is kind of like college in the sense that the responsibility is all on you. Nobody is going to stand there and tell you to work out, or to do those push-ups with correct form. It falls on you to take pride in what you’re doing and to do your best. Anybody could do the P90X program if they just went through the moves without lifting the maximum amounts of weight, doing the maximum amount of reps, or using the best form possible. You can easily tell who takes the responsibility to do the exercises correctly because it shows in their fitness. The same goes for college. You can tell who isn’t getting the most out of their college experience, and I’d like to think that I don’t fall into that group.

Cultural and Community Engagement Campus Connection - Drug Jeopardy

            One of the most important facets of college is community activity, or being involved in the college community. Community involvement makes a college into something more than a bunch of classrooms and dorm rooms. Everybody always takes about a neighborhood being more than a bunch of houses near each other, but this also applies to the college community. Events on college campuses are helpful in the fact that they bring people together who may not have met otherwise. In the case of Paul Smith’s College, events are put together by Student Activities, Leaning Pine Productions, the Joan Weill Library, and several other groups. One of the events that I attended was actually put together by one of the RA’s in my dorm. The event was Drug Jeopardy, and the name really speaks for itself. We were split up into two teams and we had to answer questions to earn points, and the team with the most points at the end of the game was declared the winner.

            Drugs can be a touchy issue in any group of people, especially college students. What started out as a fun, easy-going game eventually became serious, because the topics covered eventually started to really make people think. People began to tell stories of how their friends and/or family have been affected by drugs, and it really made everybody think. The stories originally felt like a blast of reality, because it made me realize that the world isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a “sunshine and rainbows” type of guy, but those stories really brought me back down to Earth. It also made me think of how lucky I am that none of my friends or family have been negatively affected by drugs. The stories showed how essential community is, because those who told the stories usually eventually talked about those who supported them through those tough times. Then I actually thought about how the college community is a great support network for college students, especially considering the fact that most students are away from their families.

            Just like several other things on college campuses, the drug problems revealed were only a microcosm of a full-blown issue that affects thousands of people in the world outside of college. I think that because I’m from a very small town and a very small high school, I have a tendency to think of issues on a small scale. More simply put, I tend to “live in a box” where I tend to forget about issues that don’t directly affect me. I think this thinking has translated to college because Paul Smith’s is so isolated that it feels like a whole different world when compared to the world outside of campus. The school and the Adirondacks have created such a sense of being protected from the outside world that they have formed the new “box“ for me to live in. Hearing the stories and realizing what drugs are actually doing to people really made me think about how I have started to live in my new “box”. My thinking therefore made me realize that I need to be more aware of the world outside of my “box”.

            More than anything, the event increased the connection between those of us who attended. We all seemed to have a good time playing the game, but we were later able to sympathize with those who revealed they had been affected by drugs in some way. It sounds about as corny as it gets, but it’s true. I instantly became friends with a couple of people who live in my hall, because we always had that experience in common with each other. Whenever we see each other around campus we’re more easily able to talk with each other, not because we always talk about drugs or the event, but because we already feel more comfortable with each other. The event may have been an example of how easily events around campus can create a sense of community among the students.

            This event, like most other events around campus showed that college students are diverse, but they can come together in any situation. Those of us that attended definitely feel more of a sense of community around campus. This is listed as one of the colleges goals on the school website (http://www.paulsmiths.edu/slh/residence_life/housing.php). The website talks about how campus life is designed to “support the development of communities in which students can meet their educational and personal goals”. Even though this sounds as though it’s probably on every college’s website, I can personally testify that it is true here at Paul Smith’s College. Even an event as simple as “Drug Jeopardy” can instill a sense of community in the students, which shows how accepting the students are to each other. I think that acceptance is one of the keys of a good community, which is why the Paul Smith’s community is so exceptional.

            

Personal Responsibility and Expression Campus Connection - Meet With Academic Advisor

Just about every college student will have to visit their academic advisor at some point throughout their academic career. This is because advisors help students choose the courses that they need to take in order to meet certain academic requirements, and above all to be successful after college. If nothing else, a student’s advisor has to approve the courses that a student chooses to take in a given semester. The advisor can then help the student possibly choose a course that would be more beneficial to the student, or they can simply approve the courses chosen by the student. Many students may be too shy to meet with somebody they’ve never met before, let alone somebody who will play such a big part in their day-to-day life. I’ll admit that I was initially pretty nervous about meeting with my advisor, Russ DeFonce.

            I initially reached out to Russ through e-mail the day that advanced registration began. I was pretty nervous because I didn’t know what to expect, but boy was it much easier than I thought. Russ was one of the easiest people to talk to, and it felt like I had known him for a while. This made it really easy to quickly work through the assembling of my schedule. While doing so, we encountered several problems with courses that were supposed to be offered, but were not being offered. We discovered what a problem this actually was; because out of about seventeen courses that I needed to fulfill a certain category, only one or two were actually being offered. This could be a big problem because it makes the student program planning sheets very hard to fill out. Russ also talked about how the requirements and suggested classes for each major change every year, which makes it even harder yet to fill out the student program planning sheets. Russ said that the changing requirements and the courses being offered, or in this case the courses that weren’t being offered, were causing big problems for several students and that the school or the registrar’s office really needed to look into fixing these problems.

            Meeting with Russ didn’t directly increase my connection with other students in the Paul Smith’s community, but rather indirectly instead. Meeting with Russ helped me to get over my shyness, because I had to take the initiative and set up a meeting with him. The fact that the meeting was much easier than I thought it would be, showed me that taking the initiative to talk to people isn’t nearly as hard as I normally think it is. It is now easier to talk to other students as well as with faculty that I may not be totally familiar with.

            My visit with Russ also helped to increase my understanding of the community around Paul Smith’s. This is because I had to research the topic, “What will the Adirondack Park be like in 2050” for my natural resources class. In order to obtain the best information, I decided to interview Russ, because I knew that he had a lot of experience in the Adirondacks. Russ’s knowledge of the economy also proved to be an added asset that made learning about the Adirondacks even easier. I asked Russ questions about how the Park would be environmentally, socially, and politically by the year 2050. Russ’s answers provided a truly unique view of the Adirondacks. One of the questions that I asked him was, “Will the condition of the environment get better or worse in the future?” Russ said that the optimist in him would like to think that the environment would get better, but he thought that the environment would eventually get worse because of our values as a society. He said that as long as we value things on a monetary scale, the environment would never get any better. Instead we need to value things on a scale of what they provide us. Russ gave the example of buying a banana for one dollar. Is that banana worth one dollar, or is it worth the nutrients and energy that it gives our body? Russ also provided some great insight to what the economy and society of the Adirondacks will look like in the future, as well as what they look like now.

A student who chooses to avoid meeting with their advisor is really missing out, because a good relationship with a college advisor can mean the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful college career. I know that I sure am glad that I met with Russ, because I definitely feel better about my college career going forward. I now know how lost I would be without a helpful academic advisor like Russ, because there are so many things to consider that I would not be able to possibly remember them all. I found a small article that highlights some of the importance of an academic advisor. It talks about how an advisor can be one of your best friends throughout college, and after meeting with Russ, I completely agree.

http://www.collegeview.com/articles/article/your-academic-advisor

Health and Wellness Campus Connection - Using the campus dance room

            One of the most interesting things about a college campus is the diversity all throughout campus. Sure chances are that everybody on campus shares the common interest of nature and the outdoors, but most people are probably interested in totally different things. This is evidenced by the fact that there are several different clubs ranging from the draft horse club to the anime club. Someone who sits in their dorm room and doesn’t leave to explore the campus and its people is truly missing out.

            I work out every day, so it was only a matter of time before I utilized the campus gym and dance room. The first time I went to the campus gym/dance room I had no idea what to expect because I had always exercised by myself in my basement, never with any other people (other than the occasional family member). It turns out that it is not too hard to work out with other people around, and it can actually be more interesting because I find that I talk to some different people that I may not have otherwise talked to. I think it is easier to talk to these people because I share a common interest in fitness or working out.

            Throughout the several times that I have worked out in the dance room, I’d say that I have encountered several different issues that people are dealing with around the campus community. I remember talking with one guy named Mitch before working out one night. The conversation eventually moved to the condition of my feet and legs. Mitch said that it’s great that I’m in better shape than most kids on campus who don’t have anything holding them back physically. Another similar incident in the dance room has happened several times while I am working out on Tuesday nights. A guy and a girl (whom I assume are a couple) come in and try to do the “Insanity” workout. While I was working out, I said to them, “Oh, are you guys doing the Insanity workout program”. The girl immediately responded by laughing and saying, “We’re trying anyways”. I don’t mean to sound all high and mighty, but you could tell that the couple wasn’t in very good shape, but it really got me thinking. They are in such better shape than most people on campus because they’ve taken the initiative to get into shape rather than sit around and watch television all day. This is similar to what Mitch said to me because he praised me for making the best of my situation rather than sitting in my dorm room playing video games all day. This really tells me that physical fitness could be a problem around campus. Everybody know about the “Freshman 15”, but working out in the dance room shows me that some people, including myself, are genuinely concerned with the health and fitness of the campus.

            Going to the dance room to work out has undoubtedly helped me connect with other people on campus. When I am exercising I am in my niche, which means that it is easier for me to open up to others. This is definitely the case when I work out in the dance room. I talk to people in the dance room that I probably wouldn’t talk to outside of the room. The fact that people are in the dance room working out automatically tells me that they share a similar interest in fitness or exercising, which I wouldn’t be able to tell just by seeing them around campus. I now recognize those people when I see them on campus, outside of the dance room, and it is easier to approach and talk to them knowing that we have shared interests.

            Even though the number of people I have met in the dance room is a small sample of all Paul Smith’s students, it has helped me to better understand the campus as a whole. The dance room is an example of the diversity around campus because many people use the same room for completely different things. I know that I myself have used the room for workouts such as plyometrics, kenpo (a mix of cardio and karate), yoga, and core synergistics. I have seen other people use the room for dancing, martial arts, workouts similar to my own, and even just play music very loudly.  The variety of activities in the dance room shows the variety of interests and goals across campus.

            When you look at the students on a college campus, you can easily see a lot of diversity. At the same time, you will also see a lot of things that the students have in common. For example, here at Paul Smith’s, you will see a lot of boots and clothes suited for the outdoors. This shows that while we may have similar beliefs such as a love of the outdoors, we are all still different. I think the dance room on campus serves as a microcosm of this concept. This concept makes me think of the quote, “Variety is the spice of life”. In this case, I’d like to modify the quote to what I originally heard from Tony Horton in a P90X workout. Tony says, “Variety is the spice of fitness”. I couldn’t agree more with both quotes because variety in someone’s life just makes them better, because they are more able to adapt to anything that may come up in their life. This is the same in the world of fitness, which is evidenced by the Paul Smith’s College dance room. There is a good number of people who use the room, but usually not for the same things. This collectively shows that fitness, like life, is better with variety. The dance room here at Paul Smith’s has shown me this, and I’ll never forget it.

In this video, Tony Horton talks about his first “law of fitness” – variety.