From the beginning of the semester till now, I have grown a lot in so many ways, I feel so much more mature and organized, I learned how to organize myself and set my priorities straight also to make time for self-care and other things as to not drown myself in work. I expected this year to be so much easier, but I expected to grow in my passion and motivation for my studies and schoolwork in general and the experiences of this semester met and even exceeded my expectations. I was able to find my learning style and adapt to it, I was able to manage my time very well, I was able to give myself a break where needed. I grew so much in my motivation to study; I keep myself focused on my goals and make sure to do everything that I need to do at the time that I need to do it. One thing I wish I knew 14 weeks ago is that I can handle it, I can handle being on top of my studies and having time for extracurricular activities. I just had to learn and adapt as time went by.

I spend more time studying for each class now than at the beginning of the semester, especially now that finals are approaching.  I changed my study habits especially for chemistry, by going for office hours right after the class and making sure I grasp the lesson, before going over the notes and solving practice problems. The resource that has been of great help to me this semester and will assist my next semester is office hours. They have been so helpful to me in understanding the material taught in class. I will continue going for office hours as much as I can and getting as many practice tests as I can do.

  The classes I enrolled in this semester were quite different on the surface. Looking deep into them, they tied together at a particular point. The lessons, no matter how dissimilar they might have seemed, tied back to the theme of social justice. For example, in chemistry, when we learned about elements, we tied our lesson to the flint water crisis and studied the effects of lead contamination of water. During the events provided by the learning community the one that was most beneficial to me was the one where we had the health professionals from the college of environmental health. It was beneficial to me to learn about another career path and the opportunities it entails so that I can decide on a parallel major.