My intended major is nursing, and I chose this major because I love to help people. I’ve been compassionate since a child and being in a high school that helped me with all of my health professions knowledge, really pushed me to the major. I know a lot about the hospital setting and I know many different skills like bed making, bed baths, different types of assisted lifting and so much more. I prefer to work in a high pace setting; I think it would be able to keep me on my toes which is something I really need. In 5 years, I expect to be hopefully getting into the Physician Assistant Program to be able to become a physician assistant. In 10 years, I plan to be working in the hospital in either trauma or neonatal as a Physician Assistant using all my skills that I have gotten from my high school program and the nursing program at ODU.

Out of the other 3 majors, I would look into public health, sociology and nuclear medicine. I would look into public health because I enjoy helping others that can’t help themselves. That is a big reason why I am going into nursing. Sociology is such an interesting study and I would love to go more in depth if I wasn’t going to be a nursing major, even though it does go into nursing in a way. Nuclear medicine is something you don’t hear about every day and it would be something that you would really have to enjoy becoming a major. I would like to know what they do for their major just to see what it is like. Is that for like people that want to be radiologists? I think that is what It is for, but it is still interesting.

I expected a big difference between high school and college is the independence, but honestly it was not too bad. My high school was a college prep school, so I was more prepared than most people coming into college. In high school, they give you the due date a couple days before it is due. In college, they give you all the due dates at one time and expect you to remember to do them by those dates. I expect the hardest thing is college is managing my time because I have to keep up with all my due dates. I think the biggest challenge with moving away for college is that I am not close to my family, so I don’t get the love and support like I did back home. I have a government job where I can work from in my dorm. I am working about 20 hours a week and it is very flexible to when I am free. All I have to do is get small projects from my boss that I can take my time.

I do not think there is a difference between homework and studying because you should treat all homework like a study session. You should be trying to learn something new every time you do work. I study about 4 hours or more a day for most of my classes. I expect to spend the less time studying for statistics because I took AP Statistics in high school, but I just did not pass the AP exam. I always study in the library because I can get distracted very easily in my room. The library is very quiet, and I am able to concentrate on all my work and be very productive. In my room I have temptations of turning on my TV, just giving up on studying or hanging with my roommate. My roommate and I take hours out of every day to come to the library and study for multiple classes. My best time to study is during my free time; I have a lot of classes, so whenever I get free time, I take advantage of it and study. I take time out every week for my asynchronous classes so that I don’t get behind. I just make sure I put all my assignments in my planner so I can know what my studying looks like.

I think taking notes and making flash cards are the best way for me to study; I take notes so that it is only information that I know is important. The only class that I have different studying methods is in math. In math, I write down certain problems and solve them until I know that I understand every step I am doing.

One academic resource I will definitely be using this semester is the writing center; I know how to write good papers, but I want to make sure that they are on a college-level good and not just a high school good. I think I will use study groups as well because I work well with others and we can bounce ideas off of each other. I would like to learn more about the success center just because I do not know what they do there and I would love to be able to put them to good use. In high school, I played varsity lacrosse and volleyball and was in the national honor society. I plan to play club lacrosse on campus because I wanted to play for the school, but it was a lot of commitment between playing for a Division I school and being a nursing major. I decided to prioritize my studies over my athletics.