Sunday, September 1, 2019

Week 2: Intro to Honors and Time Management

     As the fall semester of college gets into full swing, our FYE class on Monday took the time to address what students do in the Honors Program and what requirements they have to fulfill within the first year of college. Dr. Engel, Dr. Desiderio, and Erin Martin are three faculty members that help maintain the Honors Program at Georgia Southern University went over meeting the requirements for the undergraduate thesis and experiential learning. For freshmen, volunteering is the only way to earn hours to experiential learning. Each Honors student has to complete at least 25 hours towards experiential learning. One of the experiential learning opportunities I am looking into is being an Honors Ambassador where I can tell other people about the Honors Program and what it has to offer at different events including the Eagles Preview. The faculty were willing to answer any questions that we asked, and I definitely appreciate them for their time and being able to inform us about what it takes as an Honors student. 

     On Wednesday, our peer leader of Taylor Close led the class by showing us videos and conducting activities to address the issue of Time Management. Taylor showed us a video on how a student can manage their time poorly by procrastinating their work and plagiarizing other people's material. Wanting to do the opposite of what the student in the video did, our class discussed what it takes to manage our time properly and get tasks done in a timely manner. As a class, we mentioned that having a planner, starting on assignments early or a good bit before the deadline, and leaving your schedule flexible so that a person has time available if something were to come up. After discussing the video, we tackled two different activities. The first activity was focused on us working together in groups to complete tasks on a given list. Each task awarded a specific number of points, and each team had to strive to get the most points out of any team in a set time period. My team, with the simple name of the Lions, only scored about 70 points which was the least of any team. The reason why we did not get a lot of points is because our team got caught up on big tasks that did not reward a lot of points. This situation can relate to our college lives as we have to weigh out what tasks and things on the schedule weigh out the other things. Basically, which things in our daily lives do we give our attention to and prioritize on a daily basis. The next activity we did was individually based, and each student had to find a way to spend $86,400 on whatever we wanted. If we did not spend the money, we would not be able to use it at all. With this money, I could buy things like a car, clothes, and even silly things like Flex Tape and Mac & Cheese. At the end of the activity, we were told that spending the money was like how we spend our seconds in a day because there are 86,400 seconds in a day. Each day is critical in our short lives, and we have to make the most of our experiences in life. This also means that we have to decide what our priorities are in life so we can set our minds to those priorities.


Personal Reflection:

After sitting through my classes in FYE this week, I told in a lot of advice and pointers on managing my time. Time Management for me is crucial because it impacts the current days and the days and weeks to come. Planning things out on a planner or an app is important to me because it allows me to set up my day and roll through it at ease knowing I got everything worked out. I also learned that I don't need to cram every big task on one day because it can lead to problems. If something, for example, were to come up on a Saturday night that would require my full attention that night and part of Sunday, I would not be in a good place because I would not be able to complete most of my stuff I had crammed on Sunday. With this said, I need to be better at spacing my tasks out so that my schedule can be flexed a bit if it needs to. One of the ways that I can manage my time is using the app  Any.do. The app is very easy to use as it allows you to set up a list of tasks for you to do and you can set reminders through the app that reminds you of what you should be doing or when something is due. I now have the ability to chose between the app and the planner, and they will both be useful in keeping track of what I need to do on a daily basis. 

As you can tell from this post, I had a lot to talk about from class this week as I am wanting to extract as much information as I am given. 

Sources:
https://students.georgiasouthern.edu/counseling/resources/self-help/academic-success/
https://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/fye/students/first-year/time/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31mfgrZpLus&app=desktop

No comments:

Post a Comment