First Semester

• Tell us how you have grown from the beginning of the semester to now. I’m more confident in the work that I submit and I’m not scared of not understanding what I learn in class.             
• What were your expectations for this year? I expected to have a hard transition from high school to college level courses.
• Did this semester’s experiences meet your expectations? Explain. I didn’t particularly have a hard time this semester because I was really focused on making sure I paid attention and class and finished my work on time.
• What is something you wish you knew 14 weeks ago? I wish I knew how fast we’d go through the courses in college.

Study Habits

• How much time do you spend studying for each class now vs. at the beginning of the semester? Now that I’m getting ready for final exams I spend an extra hour for each class. In the beginning of the semester I would spend an hour a week for each class.
• How have your study habits changed? I used to just read the textbook and my notes to review but now I do more practice assignments and quizzes.
• Tell us about a resource that you have used/learned about this semester that will assist you next semester. I went to the science tutoring center in the library to get help in my chemistry class.
• What study habits/techniques will you use going into next semester? I’ll review stuff from my classes everyday and use flash cards to remember key words.

Health Professions Learning Community

Sociology helped me understand how things like income, race, and where someone lives can affect their health. Health Professions took that further by showing how healthcare workers can address those challenges when treating patients. Chemistry tied in by explaining the science behind things like how medicines work and how chemicals in the environment can impact health. Together, these classes showed me how both social and scientific factors play a role in keeping people healthy.

Parallel Plan

• Which two other majors would you be most interested in? Why? As a biomedical sciences major, I’m interested in nursing and dental hygiene because both let me work directly with patients and help people. Nursing is great because it offers so many different career paths and the chance to make a real impact on someone’s health. Dental hygiene is also cool since oral health is super important for overall health, and I’d get to educate patients and help prevent problems.
• What benefit is there to having a parallel plan (or two) in place? Having a parallel plan is important because it gives you options and flexibility if your original plan doesn’t work out. Sometimes things don’t go as expected, like not getting into a specific program or realizing a career isn’t the right fit.
• How could one or both of these two majors benefit your current intended major? Nursing and dental hygiene could benefit my biomedical sciences major by giving me more hands-on experience with patient care and a better understanding of how science applies in real-life healthcare settings. Both fields focus on working directly with patients, which could help me develop important communication and clinical skills. Also with dental hygiene I could learn about oral anatomy and diseases since it’s not included in a regular medical curriculum.