Reflection Paper

This essay is to demonstrate that I understand my own roles and responsibilities in lifelong learning.

In one of my favorite books, Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s “When Breath Becomes Air”, he humorously but genuinely describes how, when in college, he found himself searching for the meaning of human life. While my ambitions aren’t quite as broad, I do hope to unravel an equally pressing aspect of living: our ability to learn. When we are young learning is the most exciting thing and fortunately the excitement has followed me out of childhood. I see our ability to learn as the basis of everything we do and the study of it encompasses multiple topics that the thinker in me fawns over: language, psychology, and philosophy most notably. Students in programs like psychology and cognitive science, that explore such topics, can do work in places where crucial

Growing up church was not a place we “had time” to attend, and God was not a part of our household. It was not until about four years ago, that I began my relationship with Christ. On July 18, 2011, I began to have nine plus seizures a day; I spent a lot of time in the hospital trying to get answers to my over-night attacks. During this time, I fell into a depression because of the lack of answers. I felt that I was just being given drugs to get me discharged. Many would send prayers, and ask me to come to church, but it was not something I wanted to do. At this point in my life, I held anger in my heart; going to church and hearing about a God I did not know didn’t make sense. My mother was my primary care taker, and dealing with my sickness was not easy. In 2013, she was invited to church by a co-worker, and she took me along with her for the “ride”. We attended citylife church, and from the moment worship began, I was in tears. While the Pastor was speaking, it was like he was speaking directly to me, and I thought to myself, “He must know about why I am so depressed.” At the end of the service, the Pastor asked for those who would like to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior to come up, and I could not get there fast enough. This is where my journey with Christ began, and I learned that it was not the Pastor who was speaking to me on this day. God already knew I would be in attendance on this day, and I needed to hear the message that was given through the Pastor. I

After struggling through a tedious, fourteen-year battle of demanding instructors, cruel girls, inedible lunches, and grueling assignments, I thought that my journey of receiving an education was finally over. While participating in my high school graduation in May 2017, I remember thinking that I finally accomplished my goals and finished learning. Soon after graduation, I realized that I had to begin a new journey and was in turn, infuriated. I mean, what is the point of a “graduation” if a person just has to continue pursuing an education for usually at least four more years? If you ask me, that sounds more like a bogus celebration to make people think that they are done with school when they are actually not even close. Anyways, to get to the point, I finally thought I defeated education, but in truth, education came back swinging and then proceeded to drive me out of my hometown into something awful known as college. Once driven out of my home, I found myself in Montgomery, Alabama, which is where I have spent the past three months. Over these past few months, I have been through one of the most challenging journeys of my life. From intense battles of stress to the lovesick Kydo, the purple-headed monster, and the evil serpent, I have faced many trials. Despite these struggles that I have endured, I have somehow remained strong and am still alive today to tell many of my experiences. Thus, I have decided to put the journey of my first semester of college into writing

Graduating from a school with less than 500 total students in grades Pre-k through 12, my class consisted of 19 students. Due to the modest size, most student athletes participated in multiple sports. In fact, I was on the basketball, baseball and track team going into my senior year.

The United States has always been known as a melting pot; a country where different ethnicities, cultures, and religions could congregate to in order to escape from conformity. A country where people could go in order to start a family and raise their children in a diverse environment. A place where everyone from different backgrounds is represented and everybody can share their ideals and experiences and feel welcomed. That is what I was told growing up, that is what teachers and mentors engraved into my brain, and it wasn’t until I was seventeen-years-old when I realized that is far from the truth. My language and perspectives are constricted due to the fact I grew up in the United States, and all it took was one trip overseas for me to discover the diversity of the world in comparison to America.

Do we really look into ourselves? As I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch over fall break his life story really made think: How will I accomplish my dreams like Mr. Pausch? Randy’s idea of a “brick wall” really hit me because I admire that someone believes that hardships could lead to great things if they work towards it. I want to look into myself and see what life lessons that I go by the seventeen years I have been on this planet, and how they reflect what people will remember about me.

I met with K. Beam before we left on our two- week fall break to discuss working with her for the coaching practicum and what she was interested in working on with her students.

A week before college move-in day, I had to leave behind my strenuous summer job with a heavy heart, wondering if I would ever see my kids ever again. If you have ever worked with young children, you know how exceptionally hard it is to be the perfect balance of fun and energetic, yet responsible and poised. Even though I was a camp counselor for three years, each summer felt like the first. This past summer was just as exhausting as any other year, but it was more momentous in more ways than one. Going into the summer, I knew that it would be my last- seeing that I was moving to Charlotte and I would never see that same group of kids ever again. In May, before it was 95 degrees consistently, I made a promise to myself to appreciate the experience because I would never get another summer like it.

Can one semester and class really change a person? Most would not think, it’s only half a year. How much can half a year do? I thought the same thing until this semester in Mrs. Wawrzyniak’s class. This class achieved so much in such a short amount of times it’s incredible. I can truly say over these 6 months I’ve changed as a student and person overall. It wasn’t always easy or fun but I’m glad I experienced everything I did in this class. I’m going to tell you everything we did from the little achievements to the huge ones!

Michael Jordan said talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. This mentality is precisely the case with the compensation project. Individually, everyone could have finished the project however by working with others the project became more polished and finished quicker. In class, discussions with my group allowed me to gain exceptional insight on topics which previously I would have overlooked. Teamwork forced me to open up and look inwards to find how I was limiting the team and way to improve myself.

It was yet another dull day in my high school English IV class. I arrived on-time and placed my worn out, overused, school issued computer on my desk and began looking up the day’s assignments. Soon enough the teacher would begin to speak, but before he even began I was already sitting there with the feeling of annoyance. “A fifteen-page senior research project” the announcement read. “Fan-fucking-tastic,” I remember thinking to myself. Another complete waste of my precious time I could have used to work on my car, or finish the next level of the video game I had been so often enjoying. The teacher announced the usual, “No plagiarism, 12-point font, double spaced, MLA format” nothing we hadn’t ever heard before, but somehow always managed to require 30 minutes of my life to explain. “This ought to be easy,” I had thought to myself, ignoring the rest of the instructions given. Little did I know; this paper was going to change the very way I thought about life.

I am a full-time student and I reside on campus. I am in the honors program and many of the honors cohort resides in Anthony or Sherman Hall. I am including this in my paper because I want you to understand that the people who I live with I am familiar with. Our laundry room is combined with our kitchen there is a nice table with chairs, normal kitchen amenities, and of course the washer and dryer. Sunday evening, I washed a load of clothes which is normal however instead of drying them and then folding them I decided to wash them and fold them wet. I folded my clothes in the kitchen area at the table so people would come in and see that I was folding my clothes and just make normal conversation with me.

On my last day with class 3-213, I had the opportunity to conduct an interdisciplinary lesson using nonfiction articles. The articles I used derived from Nonfiction News: African Animal Edition by Cecelia Margo. Accordingly, the students have been studying nonfiction for several weeks and because of this, they had previously learned the various features of this genre. Upon planning for this lesson, I took time to prepare and craft an activity that would promote collaboration and engagement. Thoughtfully, I took into consideration the children that were in the room and adapted my lesson to meet their educational needs. Thus, I decided that I was going to crafted this lesson on the premises of two ideas: (1) tiered-text differentiation and (2) the pairing of advanced and struggling learners. Going into this lesson, I knew that I wanted to ask thoughtful and encouraging questions that would enable students to integrate their prior knowledge and challenge them.

Learning is an important component in life; if human cannot learn and apply what they learn, you would not be able to read what I am writing nor would I be able to write it initially. The process of learning change drastically from one thing to another, from one person to another. There are some skill which you need to practice a lot in order to learn them, driving cars for example. Others can be acquired through reading and thinking, logic subjects for instance. In addition, we can learn from others’ experiences in learning –learning from others mistakes. In this paper, I am going to tell you about one of the most important periods in my life; in a period where everything, suddenly, deviated from the ordinary, thus, learning and acquiring new skills was the only choice I had. Some of us have experience that period or something similar to it, however, not all of us faced it with the same way. This period is when you graduate from high school and moved far away from your home/family to study, which for some people, including me, is something extraordinary, something they have not experienced it for their past 18 years.