One thing this week has taught me is the importance of quality over quantity. Whether it was in my new History class setting or in College 101, I learned the importance in prioritizing. Our first subject in College 101 this week was first impressions, and the lesson was the importance of resumes. When we were assigned to make our first resume, I looked at the assignment as an opportunity to showcase my self and basically, go all out! I made a list of all the volunteer work I've done the past three years, thinking it would look pretty impressive; after all, I am involved in a lot of organizations. But boy was I wrong! After revising my resume and hearing the constructive criticism that went with it, it made me realize that all my resume really looked like was a jumbled up laundry list. Depending what the resume is intended for, it's only best to list the activities and organizations that will best show what kind of positive qualities the candidate possesses.
This lesson very easily applied to my history class as well. Of course, as a high school student in a class full of college students with a professor that does not give much individual student attention, it was a very intimidating situation. Therefore, naturally, when we began lessons on our first day, I hurried my best to copy down all the notes that my professor had up on the board. But little did I know, this was a mistake as well. Our teacher began class the following day by stressing the importance of note taking. I'm thinking to my self: "well, that's not a problem for me at all; I always make sure to copy down every single word Mr. Scheere has up on the outline". But there was more to Mr. Scheere's speech than I thought. Again, he reminded us that it's not quantity, but quality. He preached to the class that if all we did was sit there and try to copy down every single word on the outline, all we were doing was waisting our time. He stressed to us that it is most important to take our own, individual notes; allowing us to not only remember the lesson better when later reviewing and studying our notes, but also allowing us to listen to his lecture, instead of solely concentrating on writing down notes. My notes went from crammed and messy, to now organized and much more easy to review. His outline was only meant as a "guide" for us to look off of; It wasn't about how many notes I took, but the quality and meaning behind them.
Another new lesson the Scholar's Program taught me this week about college, was the headaches of eating, parking, and walking on campus; in other words: the importance of time management. On my first day of driving to campus, I used a fourth of my gas tank just searching for an open parking spot that morning! From then on, I decided to take my time, park away from main campus, and just take the shuttle to class. It is much less of a headache, showing me how much better it is to just use the resources provided for us students. Then on the following day, I decided to sleep in an extra five minutes, which of course, turned in to 15 minutes. I ended up running late, not having enough time to grab breakfast. All through my study group session, my stomach would not stop rumbling! Finally, when we were released for our next class, I decided to stop at the vending machines for food, except they all needed mav cards, and I had no money on my mav card! I ended up going in to the cafeteria to get some food. I bought a muffin and juice, and it came out to almost $5.00 even! It taught me a good lesson in managing my time better. I couldn't believe how expensive campus food was! Thank God Summer Scholars provided us with free meals all last week! :)
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