From the first day of school at ODU I have become more confident in who I am as a student.  I know that I can keep up with all the work given to me and I am able to pay attention and focus enough to get the grades that I want.  The semester’s experiences did not meet my expectations, I didn’t really make or meet any good friends throughout the semester.  All of the learning community activities were super cool and fun.  Those were something I always looked forward to when I knew they were coming up.  I wish I would have known not to stress, it will all be okay.  No matter how bad I think it is getting, it is under control and will be handled.   

For each class I barely spent any time studying.  Now I spend about an hour a day on each subject.  Which shows an improvement on my grades and my mental health as well.  

My study habits have changed. Now I put my phone on silent and try various different ways of studying.  For some classes I do the study guides, while other classes I just read over the notes over and over and write them down till I know they are in my head.  The teachers, they are not here to hurt or get mad at you.  They want you to succeed so they are willing to help you in most ways possible.I will be writing down my notes, if possible, before class so I can go to class just ready to listen and then when I get home that night go over everything learned that day.  As well as, I will continue to answer the study guides as long as they are given to me.

These courses were all tied together by the little details strung together into each class.  For example, today in history, the teacher talked about nuclear families.  This was also something we had talked about in sociology, although it was something small it was still something I was able to connect back to sociology.  But each of the classes talked about health professions one way or another.  Another example is how our history projects I did my project on medical examination on Ellis Island.  While chemistry and sociology brought in small details about being in the medical field.  The event that was most beneficial for me as a student was when the art therapist came to visit.  This was because I got to see what all an art therapist actually does, how they use what we think is a normal piece of scribble and they can help someone with their emotions through it.  As well as, we did this the week before finals when we all started to stress.  This definitely brought a moment of relief to many of us freshmen at that moment in time.