Semester Reflection (FYS)

The first semester of my college career was pretty hectic, especially due to the pandemic of Covid-19 being around and making everything become more of a struggle or require different ways of living. Through out the semester I had tons of new experiences like the environment such as all the snow we would get or all the deer that ran around campus when ever they pleased. It ranged from me making really good friends with my professor to getting locked out of my own dorm room. My grades throughout the year were solid I had plenty of room to improve, but I would say it was a good starting point to build off from and grow as a student. There were a few instances where I wish I would've handled my situations differently whether that was the way I approached my assignment or whether that was the decision I made with my day to day planning. The cafeteria food was pretty good throughout the year, sure it dropped in quality towards the end of the year, but I don't take it personally. I had many opportunities to bring my family up to Alamosa or even to go visit my family since I only live three hours away, which was very beneficial for me because I never felt disconnected from my family. I had a good time this semester, I enjoyed my instructors and my classes. I'm more excited to be one step closer to be able to really dive deep into my major and take those specific classes within my major. I had a lot of new social experiences with my friends, mostly those who where my teammates, however they were all new experiences that I enjoyed and learned from. This first semester has taught me more about myself than anything else simply through my academic aspect of life, my athletic aspect of life, and even my social aspect of life. Basically I have felt that this semester is a good base for the rest of my academic career to build and grow where ever that may lead me. Most of my goals were simple realistic goals and I would say that I did accomplish mostly all of my goals or am on track to complete my goals. There wasn't anything super major that I failed to accomplish which is a good sign. One of my personal goals was adjusting to living this new life away from home and I thought it would be hard, but I feel I this life fit like a glove to me. Some of me goals were to graduate with a bachelors degree and another one was to strengthen my knee. I can say that so far I am striving towards reaching these goals, my grades were taken care of and I really am taking myself and everything around me more seriously for the better. I feel the goals I've set were perfect for me especially the way that they were so direct and to the point which makes them more of an effective tool to go about my life. Also they are very attainable, they aren't something too crazy to the point where they seem always out of reach. If anything I could've had some more less attainable goals in order to really allow me to dream bigger and get that curiosity running through me thoughts especially for these first years of college. My goals also gave me good checkpoints for myself and a good place for me to reflect on what I'm doing or even how I'm doing it. My plans following the life management project didn't quite happen for me. A lot of areas I have improved on for the beginning and I was following my plans very well, however slowly as the semester I kind of started going downhill. It was hard to keep up with my plans and change my life for the better or at least keeping it consistently better. I'll have this block of a week or a few weeks where I manage to follow through with my plan such as something like waking up early and being more productive, but then I'll just go the next week and struggle with that. I would say I have been following my plans from after the life management project, but not as well as I would have liked. There is definitely some room to improve to improve my own life which I am still currently working on day by day. My experiences have been wonderful this semester, sure Covid-19 kept making everything difficult to deal with or to enjoy anything, but I made it work and found the fun and enjoyment wherever it was! My work was good I feel and usually I would step up to the task at hand whether that was an assignment or even an assessment I needed to do. Of course there is plenty of room to improve on my quality of work as well as a personal goal of mine which is to permanently get rid of my procrastination habits. I will hopefully diminish this habit eventually, and hopefully soon too. My use of time this semester was definitely a lot better than it has been, I'm not happy with where it is right now, but I am happy where it's going. I'm always improving my use of my time every day, and I'm seeing huge improvements already from this first semester compared high school and so forth. Some new plans I have are pretty simple ones, first of all like I've said procrastination is a big aspect of my life that I can do without. I surely want to improve my use of time which kind of ties into my procrastination, but not only improve on it I want to completely get rid of it. Also I've noticed sometimes when I'm on my own I'll get lazy or discouraged from doing something and need a little bit of a push or fire under my butt and I want to eliminate that feeling and be able to just tell myself to get of my butt and do whatever I need to do without hesitation. Another big idea I have that I can adjust is my English, my grammar, and just my speech. I try to take any opportunity I can to improve my English any way I can, I really envy a person who has a good form of speech and usually you can just tell by the way they speak whether English comes easy to them or if they have studied it a lot. Other than those small adjustments I'm pretty happy with where I am right now to build on and where I am heading. Most of my plans or methods to improve and grow as a person that I want to be are working well for me.   

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