How's It Going?
Well, the first month of my second semester here at Michigan State is almost over, to which I sigh a giant breath of relief. These past three weeks have truly tested my patience and willingness to continue my higher education. I have been pushed extremely hard, not only in my writing class but also at the college of music, where I am constantly working to improve my talents and skills everyday. The first semester felt extremely difficult, however in compaison to this semester, it was easy!
During the first semester of classes I felt like my professors gave my collegues and I a bit of an advantage when it came to the objectives of the course; we were all new freshman adapting to a new environment to which we weren't comfortable with. Fall semester for me was mostly focused on improving my charisma and communication skills, meeting new people and learning how to bond and form a friendship with them. These goals have been accomplished successfully; I am very comfortable with the people I work with in my college and we all get along very well.
Now that I have adjusted to my new life as a college student, I feel it's time for me to focus on my studies - improving the skills that my college is teaching me to accomplish my career goals. This means working harder in my classes to achieve higher grade marks and to retain the information in a way that will be beneficial to me in the future. I believe that my instructors also feel that by the second semester of a college students freshman year, the student is prepared emotional to begin to fully focus on the studies at hand and work harder than before; my professors have increase the difficulty of their classes because they know the students should be ready to perform at their highest learning capabilities.
This holds true in the writing course I'm currently enrolled in; it is because of this course that I am writing this post. When my instructor went through the syllabus with the class, I knew immediately that this class wasn't going to be easy - I could tell that my writing instructor had high expectations for his students and trusted that we (his students) would put forth enough effort to accomplish our writing goals.
Now that the first month is over, I have a clear idea of amount of work this course will require from me. My instructor expects his students to maintain their blogs while working on a minor writing assignment and a major writing assignment. During this past month, I've written three blog posts (including this one) as well as turned in a minor writing assignment and a rough draft for a major assignment. I have also had to balance the work load of this course with my music classes, keeping up on my piano skills and voice skills while studying my theory, ear-training and Italian diction classes. I am also balancing my school studies with the College of Music's Opera, due to me being at M,S.U under scholarship. All this work is, as I said above, testing me. I have to figure out how to balance all my activies while also improving my writing skills and keeping my grades up in all my classes.
When this semester is over, I can guarentee the hard work I have put forth in my courses will pay off with high grade marks and a feeling of accomplishment. Also, I know that because of the challenges I am facing this semester, I will come out of my freshman year a much more well rounded student, with the capability of communicating with the professional world thanks to the skills I am learning in this writing course.