Week 4: Growth Mindset, Academic Basics, and Academic Integrity

After returning from our off week due to Hurricane Dorian, it felt very much like the very first week of school again with having to cram in a lot of work and study time for classes throughout the week. While getting to Friday and the weekend was a relief, let's explore what topics our FYE class covered over the course of the week.

Since we did not have classes two weeks ago to cover the content from week 3, our class spent the Monday class discussing ineffective and effective classroom discussions. Our FYE professor paired us with partners to discuss what we believed were effective and ineffective ways to participate and get involved in classroom discussions. I was paired with a girl by the name of Ebeni. We had a great discussion and we both mentioned various ideas on how to and how not to participate in class discussions. We mentioned that being attentive, acknowledging other people's ideas, and building off other people's ideas are some efficient ways to be involved in classroom discussions. Interrupting other people who are contributing to the discussion and disregarding other students' ideas are two ineffective ways to participate in classroom discussions. My partner and I had some good ideas and tackled the general concept of the differences between ineffective and effective classroom discussions as rest of the classroom has pretty similar ideas to what we mentioned in our partnered discussion.

On Wednesday, our class spent time talking about the two main types of mindsets and academic integrity. To start off, the two mindsets a person can have are growth and fixed mindsets. A fixed mindset is very natural for every human being to have. Having a fixed mindset is when a person believes that they can not improve themselves in certain areas and are limited to the skills and abilities they have. While most people have this mindset at times, it can be unhealthy as it traps ourselves from self-improvement. This is where the growth mindset comes into play. A growth mindset allows ourselves to improve our skills by embracing challenges and learning from the criticism and mistakes down the road of life.

After discussing growth and fixed mindsets, our professor went over academic integrity. While no one wants to admit that they have cheated on something or someone or plagiarized material for a paper or assignment, there are many instances in life that students and adults alike have not been academically honest in order to try to shortcut tasks on a daily basis. A prime example from even my past is when a student looks over at another person's test to see how they answered a particular question. In college, cheating on assignments and taking other people's material incorrectly for assignments can be crucial as doing this can lead to severe punishment. A student's academic dishonesty can get them removed from the university and the classes they are taking. All those classes would be labeled as 'withdrawn' which according to out of class reading is worse than dropping a class. A student can only drop a class within the first week of classes which also allows there to be no penalty to the student's record. Withdrawing or being removed from a class or college hurts a student's college career as withdrawing means that a student receives no credit for the courses that they started and do not get the money back that was paid for those said classes. In edition to looking at the difference between dropping and withdrawing classes out of class, I also took the time to look at the the purpose and use of multiple tabs in the Georgia Southern student portal in order to be able to complete tasks and address my needs at the college more efficiently.

Personal Reflection

After Wednesday's FYE class, I was reminded of needing to have a growth mindset with everything I do. I know that I am typically pretty bad at fixing myself on a belief that tears down my confidence. In the past, I was not good at writing papers because I was fixed on the thought that I could not improve my writing skills and vocabulary knowledge. I felt like that I have been writing the same way since my freshmen year of high school. The lesson this week was a reminder that I need to be able to be flexible and improve on my writing skills by practicing my writing and reading books to absorb fresh vocabulary to use in class assignments. 

Thank you for reading! Here are some of the sources of pictures and documents used.

Sources:
http://www.attachmax.com/51/postXVII/two-people-talking-clipart.html/collection-of-free-conversationed-clipart-person-conversation-with-two-people-talking-clipart
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xy_eX0IozQa8wtX8hxIo7HCjjaLqogf5/view
https://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/fye/academics-101/registration-terminology/
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/mindset-mind-set-mental-psychological-attitude-head-man-human-vector-illustration-146918699.jpg