Fall Reflection

Portland class was a course that let me explore the city that I’m living in right now. I was glad to take this course. Field assignments were the tasks I thought I enjoyed the most. They required me to go outside of classroom and work on the assignments. Learning outside of a classroom was a wonderful experience. At first, I thought it was the most difficult assignment to deal with. However, it was the opposite. My favorite part was to go out and take photos. Field assignments took time to do, but they did not stress me as much as reading responses. I still have to improve my critical thinking skills a lot more through my college career.

This was my second year in college. College life was still difficult even though I went to a boarding school in Utah for two years before. I was able to adjust to the culture shock throughout years. Sometimes it seemed to be better, but there was always up and down. This term was most likely to be the most difficult for me because all the classes I was taking were memorizing and math which I was having a hard time with. What I was proud of myself this term was that I connected with more people than I did last year. That was not the best year for me. I got depressed most of the time and it was really hard for me to concentrate on studying. I thought time went by very slow last year, but this year I could not believe fall term was coming to the end. It had been stressful time for me. I could say that I’ve been always a good student. I barely had bad grades. This term was one of the toughest for me. I had an attitude at some assignments. I thought they were not easy to do and they were hard to get them done. I talked to my mom and that made me less stressed. She has always been funny. I think talking to parents is one thing students should do when they are having a hard time because they know us better than anybody else.

Time management was one of the tasks that I needed to work on. It was important to manage time to study and do work. It was hard when I lived alone and nobody told me what to do. I had my mom to tell me what I should do when I was at home. It’s not about study hard all the time, but I should find something to relax to do too. Feeling stressed has never been a good feeling to have because it would never get out until everything was fine. It’s always on my mind and hard to go to sleep. When I didn’t have enough sleep, I tended not to function in class. It’s like a domino effect. Thinking positive was always a good thing to do. If I worried too much nothing was going to be better. Procrastinating was something I tended to do often when it came to assignments. I thought when I started to do an assignment early, quality of work was much better because I had time to revise it. I thought this was the best way to get the work done.

Going to office hours helped me. I did not want to go for the half of the term because I was shy to go ask questions I had. I thought after going to office hours helped me to understand what I was supposed to do in each assignment. I noticed some of grades I had they are better when I had a clear understanding.

What I wanted to get out from this course was that at least knew a bit of history of the city where I spent in my college years. There were always stories behind every city I went. I think it’s interesting to me how everyone has different experiences in the same city.That is a story that I could tell the next generation. Portland course was an interesting class. It’s almost the end of the first term and I gained more knowledge about Portland that I never knew. I found out that the Pioneer Courthouse Square was not as old as I thought it would be and it was not the same place. The place where the Pioneer Square was now located, it used to be a parking lot. It was supposed to expanded to 10 stories of parking lot ,but it turned into the Pioneer Square instead. I am excited about geography next term. I hope I’ll be at least a bit better than history. I think I have improved over the course. In next term, I hope to go out on a field trip more. I think it’s much more fun to learn outside the classroom. I sometimes was having a hard time understanding the texts I read in the book. Since we’re going to learn about geography next term, I’ll be less stressed about the reading.