Jalam’s Academic Self
I have interviewed a GSU student named Jalam Ford. I was interested in finding out how a college student like him would describe his relationship with school. He starts off by saying that he would describe his academic self in these three words, motivated, logical, and critical. He feels motivated because he feels as if he must get stuff done to get ahead in life. He is logical in the sense that he assesses problems he has with logical and realistic viewpoints. He would also describe himself as critical because in his own words, “I feel that if I am going to do anything I’d like to do it correctly the first time.”
The reason Jalam decided to pursue higher education is to give his future family a better childhood and life than his. He sees college as a way to become financially secure and independent from his parents. He also values being more educated and learning. Specifically, the reason he chose GSU was that his mom went to it for 2 years and recommended it to him.
But as Jalam was in his first semester in college, covid hit and he struggled like many of us have. He was starting to rethink being in college, so he took a break from school. A year later he decided to come back and is ready to keep studying. Now that he is back in school, he has decided to take more advice from his mother and become a nursing major. Because of that, he feels as if he must be getting the best grades, he can be accepted into the nursing program. He is not only becoming a nursing major because of his mom but also because he feels good about the fact that he can help people. One thing that Jalam said that was inspiring was, “If I know that I helped someone continue living or made them feel better mentally or physically that really does it for me.”
In school one thing he has trouble with is testing. Like many of us, Jalam has testing anxiety which causes someone to overthink and feel as if they won’t pass the exam. A way that he can help his testing anxiety is through setting an orienting task when studying so he knows that he has studied efficiently for the test like in the “What Students Should Know About How People Learn” video we watched in class. Test anxiety is something that is a concern for him but despite that, he has a good support system. His family is supportive in his pursuit of higher education and wishes him the best as a student.
College can be frustrating, one of the things that frustrate Jalam is the teachers themselves. He said, “Some professors will not give you ample time to finish work knowing that 9/10 the student has other classes to work on as well, it just seems very inconsiderate.” He finds this hard to deal with since sometimes many teachers will assign some work and suddenly students have a lot of assignments due all at once.
Jalam is going through the motions as a college student with frustrations and dealing with a pandemic as all of us are now but, one thing that keeps him motivated is his family and wanting to get into a nursing program. In the end, he just wants to be financially stable and be able to help people.
Works Cited
University, Samford, producer. How to Get the Most Out of Studying: Part 2 of 5, “What Students Should Know About How People Learn”, Samford University, 16 Aug. 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O7y7XEC66M&t=100s. Accessed 5 Feb. 2022.
Vazquez, Stephanie. “Academic Self.” 31 Jan. 2022.