If I Knew Then Essay

Thinking back on the past month or so since I started my journey at Hodges University, I have come to find that my outlook on learning and the way I go about it has changed. Since my first day of class on January 17th, I feel as though I have grown not only as a student but as a person as well. Many challenges have come upon me but I have overcome them and am now more confident in my abilities as a student. This is not my first semester in a scholarly setting, it is however my first at Hodges. When I signed up for my classes I was afraid of starting my education again. I felt I did not have the time, and that I was going to fail miserably but I knew that I had to at least try. My whole mind set has changed since then. I have realized how badly I want to succeed and make a difference in not only my life but in my daughter’s life as well. I have become more confident in myself and in Hodges for the tools I need to obtain my degree. I do believe that since January I have become a better critical thinker as well as a better writer. A wonderful tool that Hodges has provided to me is this Strategic Thinking class. The required text for this class, Pauk’s How to Study in College, has opened my eyes to better study strategies that I wish I was taught in high school. In my opinion the greatest strategy in the book is finding your â€Å"hidden† time, with being a mother of a 2 year old and working 6 days a week I believed I had no time. After reading just those few paragraphs I was amazed at how much time I actually had. I now study while my daughter is in the bath, in between calls at work, and when I’m folding laundry. I have also adapted Pauk’s strategy of minimizing multitasking; this was a difficult strategy for me to get used to. After reading the section on how to accomplish minimizing multitasking I seen how important it is to your health and your course work. If I had the chance to go back in the past to January 17th, the advice I would give myself is to pace myself. It may seem that I do not have a whole lot of time but I have just enough to study and make the grades. I would also tell myself that when I am in doubt to always remember that I do have people here to help me and I’m not in this alone. As for the future, a few things I will do differently are not to procrastinate with major assignments, as well as to be more attention to detail on my work and in class lectures. I am starting to see the importance of not just listening but hearing and understanding what the professor is lecturing about. Procrastination is one of my major down falls; I have always been bad with it. You can say I’m one of those people who think they work better under pressure when in reality for a lack of better terms I am a little bit lazy. Lazy will not get me to where I want to be in 2 years. If only I knew then what I know now, I would have had the wonderful study strategies that I now implicate, I would have never known that I could stretch myself to these lengths and not completely crash and burn at the beginning. I have grown so much as a person and student in just these few weeks that I am truly excited to continue toward the better life for me and my daughter that is waiting for us the day I graduate.