Learning Profile

1. To be honest, I only read one of the chapters. I read chapter one. Chapter one talked about how to make you better as a learner and as a whole. It listed several things a person could do to improve himself or herself. The first way was to surround yourself with more positive, happy people. I think this is important to everybody because you only feel as good as the people you hang out with. There is a saying that says, “Surround yourself with people that will only lift you higher.” This saying applies directly to the first point of success. The second point was to overcome your doubts and fears. If you never get rid of these, they will always be in your mind whenever you try to do anything. This section says that fears are learned. This makes perfect sense because parents are always telling children to watch out for scary things like snakes. To get over your fears will open up countless opportunities. The third point was to move out of your comfort zone. I think this is important because you cannot exceed expectations if you never try new things. The fourth point is to develop an optimistic attitude. I think this point goes along with your fears. This point is important because a winning attitude will give you courage to do things. The fifth point is to identify and clarify what you value in life and in yourself. Most of what you do in life is attached to something that you really care about. For instance, you may not like to work, but you do it to help your family out. The sixth point was to take pride in yourself. This is important because if you don’t take pride in yourself, you will never make something of yourself. The seventh point was to make a personal statement. This statement will help motivate you through all things. The eighth point is to make a commitment to strengthen your self-esteem. This is important because without self-esteem, you will never be able to build enough courage to do things you never thought were possible.


2. I’m not sure how many strengths I have as a learner. I think the best way I learn is by learning in “hands-on” projects. I think this why I’m very good at chemistry. I get to work with my hands on everything, from making example of molecules to making mixtures of chemicals. I think I am also good at learning things by just having someone show me what to do. This comes very easily to me. I only have to see something done once to remember how to do it. This comes in very handy for me when I work on baseball at practice. I think I can also learn things by just reading the directions and understanding how to do something. This really helps me out when I am in class and that all we may have is directions on how to do something. These different ways to learn help me understand things. I can understand things by visually seeing it, reading about it, or by just having someone tell me what to do. These things also help me explain things. I can exchange words and make it to where my piers can understand what they are supposed to do, allowing them to get things done.

3. I think my worst weakness in learning is simply not being motivated enough to care what is going on. I think I don’t care about things in class if I am not interested in what’s going on. There are some things that I see in other people that I wish I was capable of. For one, I see that one certain person is always motivated to learn things. Every time I see her, she is working on some type of school work. I admire this in her because it is something I have never really been able to do. I never feel motivated to do school work. In fact, it is something that I dread doing. I’m not sure what it is. The thing that probably gives me the most difficulty is probably just getting started on doing my work. I feel as if I will have plenty of time to do it later, so I never feel like I need to do it right away. This may be the thing I need to work on the most. I have tried it before on my toughest classes, and it seems to work. I seem to remember what we worked on that day in class and I can get it finished in what seems like no time at all.

4. The thing I learned that helped me out the best was probably just thinking about other things. Things that are outside of my own world and may not have anything to do directly with me. I have learned to start thinking about things that affect the world and the things that the world does. I have learned to think about things like poverty, rape, murders, war, and political choices. None of these things may ever affect me directly, but they affect the world in a very powerful way. My most important realization is probably that there are things much more important than me in this world. All my life I have been pretty self-centered, thinking about things that only apply to me. I have never thought about things that apply to more people than me and my family. This was a really important realization because the world does not revolve around me. There are more people that are more important and significant than me. I am starting to realize that my life is becoming less and less significant to the world, even though I know that my family cares about me very much. Decisions are made every day. These decisions affect the nation, and sometimes the whole world. Thinking about these things have helped me realize that there are things more important than me.

5. I am being when I say there were many things in this class that we did that I did not find very interesting. I think that most of the things we did might have been particularly useless to most people. Again, I am only stating my opinion on these subjects. There was one particular activity that we did in class I though actually helped me. This activity was where you sat with us to help us decide on a subject matter that really bothered us. This matter had to be a world-wide event, as well as locally. The subject I thought bothered me most was rape. When I first thought about this, I only thought that it could never happen to anyone close to me. But when I thought about what if it actually did happen to someone I knew, I thought about how I would feel. I thought that I would act irrationally towards the person that did this to the person I cared about. I began to think how outraged I would be if it actually happened. This activity effected me the most of all. I just never thought something like this could or will ever happen.

6. In my opinion, I don’t think the course worked well for me. I never wanted to do any of the work or wanted to do some of the activities that we did. Some of the things that I think worked well were the reading drills and the group computer questions (the one where everybody had a remote and could answer the questions all together). I think the reading drills worked well because it showed me how fast I was reading and compared it to where I should be reading at. When I started doing the drills, I think I was only reading at about 250 words per minute. I thought this score was decently good, but the computed said I should be reading at about 500 words per minute. After a couple of drills, my reading speed was already increased. The computer questions worked well. I felt as if no one wanted to be the only person to get a question wrong. I think the rubrixes should go. I don’t think they are useful except for giving students good grades. I think the majority of the people lie on their scores. I think you should do less small group discussions because in a small group, no one will talk or discuss anything.

7. The only piece of advice I have for incoming students is do not procrastinate on doing your work for this class. If you do not do it while you have the chance, you will be working on it the night before it is do. You should definitely not procrastinate on doing the student blog. It will be much easier to get things done ahead of time. When you get them done ahead of time, you will have more time in the end to do other things. One other thing that you might want to do is to participate in the class discussions. The will greatly improve your way of thinking and help open your mind to greater things. You should get involved in the discussion about the thing that bothers you the most. It will make you realize that anything and everything could happen to you or to someone you care about. You just need to make sure you pay attention and take part in all the discussions and activities. Remember to get all of your work done ahead of time so that it will make things easier. If nothing else just make sure you show up to class every day and the grades will take care of themselves.

8. I am not exactly sure how this class affected me. I know that it helped me realize things that I never did before. I never really thought that some things in the world could happen to me or my family. From now on, every decision I make will be made with my family and friends coming first. I have realized that every decision I make affects the people around me. Another thing I will do differently is to get my work done ahead of time. I am trying to make sure that I get all of my work finished ahead of time. When I procrastinate, it only makes it harder on me to get things finished. Procrastinating is for the lazy people, and I do not want to be lazy. I will be able to read things faster now because of the drills that we did in class. Everything that we have done will help me in my future. Being able to read things faster will help me get things done faster. Reading faster will also help me comprehend things that I have just read at a faster rate than ever before. I think I did well in this course, even though it may seem like I never put much effort into the matter.