Final Self Assessment

Madison D’Amora

INQ Final Self-Assessment Assignment

12/1/10

          “This INQ section challenges students to immerse themselves in the college experience: juggle multiple tasks, be problem solvers, ask questions, take risks, grapple with difficulty, be creative, learn from failure, take ownership over their own learning, and apply abstract concepts to their actual everyday lives.”  As a first year freshmen student at Southern Connecticut State University, there have been many challenges and major transitions that have been new to myself this year. College is a big stepping-stone in my life that I have come upon new experiences of the way I live my life. Many students like myself, are away from home for the first time and have many responsibilities to undertake. For some it is a rude awakening to “the real world” and for others who are ready for the challenge, it is a major adjustment that you have to get adapted to. I feel that the Inquiry class really helped me to the adjustment of responsibility to be a successful student at Southern.

            For this semester long course, I believe INQ has really opened my eyes to the fact that I really need to take the college experience seriously. Overall, INQ has made me really try my hardest in producing my work on time, balancing my time, and transitioning into the college life. I was very nervous when I read the seven-page syllabus of the class because I knew I was out of one of my high school classes and into college now. I really wanted to try very hard in my studies because I knew that this really counts and my parents are paying for me to go to school to receive a well education. For the Inquiry class, there was a lot of work at once and I knew I have to be on the ball with all my work and really have a plan between my academics and my social life. I feel that I really took on the responsibility and full filled all the requirements for INQ. An example of me taking on responsibility is for all my classes I made a calendar for the semester with all notes of when my assignments were due. This calendar really helped me manage my academic time and my social time for myself. Furthermore, when I did the articles for your class, I read them thoroughly and took notes on the articles and was on the ball for class time. If we had to get in groups and discuss the readings or make up questions, I would always try to participate in my group with the information I had. Overall, I always was always prepared for class.

       “The Key to growth is the introduction of higher dimension of consciousness into our awareness.” (Lao Tzu quotes) I believe that I have grown as a person and as a student from the beginning of the year to the end of the first semester. I really took on the responsibility of the fact that I was on my own for the first time in my life. I didn’t have my parents telling me when to do my homework or when to go eat dinner, I had to develop time management skills between my school work and of course the social aspect of college. I really cracked down as a student and gave up many opportunities for my social life to my academics. I wasn’t like that in high school though.  I waited to do my schoolwork to the last minute, but still got that A or B. I knew that kind of laziness wouldn’t survive in college and in fact, I experienced that. The first Wednesday I was at Southern, I went out with all my new friends to downtown and stayed out really late when I had a math quiz at eight o’clock in the morning on Thursday. I didn’t do my best work and got a C on the quiz when I knew the information real well before. If I didn’t go out I could have preformed much better on the math quiz and it was really eating me up that I actually started off on the wrong foot. Thank god the rest of my class did poorly because we fortunately had retakes and I got the A that I should have had from the start. That experience really taught me that I really had to work hard and put my academics ahead of my social because there are rarely retakes in college. Furthermore, I have really grown from that experience and have developed time management skills and have balanced my time also. I look at that mistake as a very valuable learning experience because I really learned from my mistakes.